


Dragondrums: A Decision To Foreground A Boy, Instead

by silveradept



Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [5]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Abuse, Attempted Murder, Bullying, Child Neglect, Commentary, F/M, Fire-Lizard Influenced Sex, Gaslighting, Hazing, Malicious Pranks, Meta, Nonfiction, Self-Harm, Swearing, Torture, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23280964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: A commentary read with excerpts of Dragondrums, the third and last of the Harper Hall Trilogy, part of the Dragonriders of Pern novels.
Relationships: Menolly/Sebell (Dragonriders of Pern), Piemur & Sharra (Dragonriders of Pern)
Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663699
Kudos: 11





	1. The Alto's Lament

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Director's Cut of meta originally posted at [Slacktiverse](https://slacktiverse.wordpress.com).
> 
> Content notes for each chapter are in their respective posts, and all content notes in the work are in the tags.
> 
> Director's commentary will be rendered _[in a manner like this.]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Alto's Lament](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=708tuFRwvLM) \- being important to the piece, but getting absolutely none of the credit. Which is what Piemur might be getting in this book (and what Menolly has already gotten with this book.)

Welcome to Dragondrums, the third and final book of the Harper Hall trilogy. In the last book, Menolly has gone from being the youngest daughter of an abusive Sea Holder to a journeyman Harper after a seven day whirlwind tour including Mean Girls and asshole teachers. Maybe now we can actually get some plot moving. 

**Dragondrums: Chapter 1: Content Notes: None**

The chapter opens with Piemur being roused from sleep because...

...hang on. 

_Piemur_ is the viewpoint character for this story? So we spent two books spinning our wheels, plot-wise, only to have the narrative decide that since Menolly is safe and not the potential victim of abuse and drama, she's no longer going to be the main character? Then what was the actual point of the first two books? Gratuitous violence, abuse, and damage to a female character as filler before a man steps into the protagonist role and things can finally go forward?

FFFFFFFF...

_[Starting strong with a cocowhat, and also…]_

Unacceptable. I'm sure Menolly will stay on as a principal character here, but the narrative will have to work logarithmically harder to convince me of the need to change viewpoint characters for this final volume.

So, Chapter One opens with Piemur roused by drum code messages sent from Ista Hold, another useful datum in his storehouse of interesting things that he obtained by being small, quiet, and a light sleeper. Piemur wonders if drum code will be phasing out because of fire lizards, which turns his thoughts to the time when he will have his own, at some indeterminate point in the future. And then there is the care and feeding of fire lizards before chorus lessons.

Under Domick's direction, Piemur is to sing Lessa's part in a score crafted by Menolly and Domick about Lessa and Ramoth. Normally, singing is very easy for Piemur, but the first time he tries, nothing comes out.

> "Wake up, Piemur," said Master Domick, irritably rapping his stick on the music stand. He alerted the chorus, "We'll repeat the measure before the entrance... if you're now ready, Piemur?"  
>  Usually Piemur could ignore Master Domick's sarcasm but since he had been ready to sing, he flushed uncertainly. He took a breath and hummed against his closed teeth as the chorus began again. He had tone, and his throat wasn't sore, so he wasn't coming down with a stuffed head.  
>  The chorus gave him his entrance again, and he opened his mouth. The sound that emerged ranged from one octave to another, neither of which were in the score he held.

Piemur has apparently just arrived at that dread thing, puberty. After a quick diagnostic scale to confirm, Domick sends Piemur to Shonagar. Who had been expecting him, and the two chat about Piemur's future.

I might note, at this point, that both Domick and Shonagar have been explicitly, narratively, confirmed has having sympathy and compassion in their voices as they discuss this turn of events. Menolly occasionally gets gentleness of voice from them in the last book, but here, they are portrayed as sympathetic right from the beginning, because Piemur is male. The Distaff Counterpart conversation, if Menolly started menarche, for example, would be highly unsympathetic from the Masters, but maybe sympathetic from Silvina. Which reminds me - there has been almost no mention of menstruation in these books, either. That's good, I suppose, in that no man is complaining about it, but I have to wonder whether there's some form of widely-available hormonal birth control or something that makes a period not a big deal.

That said, what passes for sympathy among the Masters is perverse, indeed.

> "You have been without doubt the most troublesome and ingenious, the laziest, the most audacious and mendacious of the hundreds of apprentices and voice students it has been my tiresome task to train to some standard. Despite yourself, you have achieved some measure of success. You ought to have achieved even more." Master Shonagar affected a point. "I find it altogether too perverse, if completely in character, for you to decide on puberty **before** singing Domick's latest choral work. Undoubtedly one of his best, and written with your abilities in mind. Do not hang your head in my presence, young man!" The Master's bellow startled Piemur out of his self-pitiful reflections. "Young man! Yes, that's the crux. You are becoming a young man. Young men must have young-manly tasks."

I'm sure, somewhere, it's comforting that the Masters are equal-opportunity assholes, but still, if this is sympathetic, there needs to be a calibration adjustment. Shonagar sends Piemur to the Masterharper for a new assignment, although he leaves the door open for Piemur's possible return once his voice settles. The now unsettled Piemur wonders what will happen now that his single talent, singing, is in jeopardy.

Joining Piemur for the briefing is Menolly, who is utterly immune to his attempts to pull information out of her about what Robinton wants. Robinton is trying to feed his fire lizard, Zair, and asks Piemur to take over long enough for Robinton to get caffeinated. Then he says that Piemur is going to be one of his special apprentices, Menolly casually asks about whether Piemur has sailed, and Piemur makes Robinton do what would be a spit take in a more immediately comedic work by correctly deducing what his mission will be.

> "And what makes you mention the Southern Continent?" asked the Harper.  
>  Piemur was rather sorry now that he had.  
>  "Well, sir, nothing special," he said, wondering himself. "Just things like Sebell being gone for a couple of sevendays mid-winter and coming back with a tanned face. Only I'd known he'd not been at Nerat or Southern Boll or Ista. There's been talk, too, at the Gathers that even if dragonriders from the north aren't spared to go south, some of the Oldtimers have been seen here in the north. Now, if I was F'lar, I'd sort of wonder what those Oldtimers were doing north. And I'd try to keep them south, where they're supposed to be. And there are all these holdless men, looking for someplace to live, and no one seems to know how big the Southern Continent is and if..."  
>  [...]  
>  "So, when Menolly talks about sailing, I know how Sebell got south without being taken by a dragon. Which Benden Weyr wouldn't permit 'cause they promised that northern dragons wouldn't go south, and I don't think Sebell could swim that far. If he can swim."

Robinton is impressed, and then impresses very firmly on Piemur that he is not to tell others about what he has figured out, and his cover story is that he will be apprenticed to the Drummaster Olodkey, to learn drummer code and to have an excuse to be places at odd hours. First, though, he's going to take a ride on a dragon, which Piemur deduces from being told to collect some wherhide from Silvina, earning himself another stern look from Robinton as he leaves.

_[Something I may not have noticed quite so much on the first pass is that for as much as Menolly might have been accused of being a musical Mary Sue, Piemur far outstrips her in that regard **and** manages to get an entire book (and more) to demonstrate all of his finely-honed talents, while Menolly essentially becomes the composer-in-residence for the Harper Hall and slowly becomes more important because of who she's attached to rather than on her own merits. Being sidelined for the third book of this trilogy is the first of many ways that Menolly is being written out of her own story.]_

Afterward, Robinton and Menolly discuss what to do.

> "But, sir, you've been supporting all the changes F'lar and Lessa have advocated. And Benden's been right to make those changes. They've united Hall and Hold behind the Weyrs. Furthermore," and Menolly took a deep breath, "Sebell told me not so long ago that before this Pass off the Red Star began, harpers were nearly as discredited as dragon riders. You've made this Hall into the most prestigious craft on Pern. Everyone respects Masterharper Robinton. Even Piemur," she added with a laugh trembling in her voice as she struggled to relieve her master's melancholy.  
>  "Ah, now, there's the real accomplishment!"  
>  "Indeed it is," she said, ignoring his facetiousness. "For he's very hard to impress, I assure you. Believe me, too, that he won't be in the least distressed to do for you what he does naturally for himself. He's always heard the gossip at Gathers and told me, knowing I'd tell you. 'What a Harper hears is for the Harper's ears.'" She laughed to find Piemur's saucy quip so applicable.  
>  "It was easier during the Interval...." [...] "Boring, too, to be completely candid. Still, it won't be that long an assignment for Piemur, will it? His voice ought to settle within the Turn, and he can resume his place as a soloist. If his adult voice is half as good as his treble, he'll be a better singer than Tagetarl."

Well, that's interesting. Robinton-as-power-player hitched his wagon to the right place, it appears, and has been rewarded for that loyalty. I wonder what those conference sessions must have been like.

But also, we have a narrative confirmation that others really do believe as the Benden Weyr leaders do, since the last time we checked in with the Lords Holder, they were of decidedly mixed opinion about the idea of the Weyrs leading the planet, partially due to the great damage the time-skipped Weyrs were doing to the good feelings and faith accumulated for destroying Thread. 

So, it looks like we're relegating the story of a young woman who grows to power and prestige from nothing, based on her talents and her great empathy (on display once again with Robinton) to foreground a boy's adventure story, starring a small but wily and smart boy who can sight-sing anything perfectly. Although that power is temporarily on hold due to puberty. Considering the boy's adventure chapters written before, it will hopefully follow suit and contain a lot less violence and abuse than the surrounding stories. Which is a good thing, if it follows through, but it's still a major mark against this story that it took away Menolly before her story was finished and backgrounded her so that we could have a male protagonist. Because there are plenty, almost a unanimity, of stories with male protagonists, whether plucky boys or heroic men, to choose from at this time in history. Menolly was unique in being a female lead, even though the narrative treated her like shit, and it produced two books that passed Bechdel (even if it hadn't been described yet) without having to try very hard at all at it, by virtue of Menolly being the lead.

I really don't understand this decision, and I don't think there's going to be an explanation as to why this change was necessary.


	2. Second Suite in F

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Second Suite in F](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTySRbCofgc), which is pretty good background for going through your normal day, right?

Last chapter, we were shifted away from Menolly to Piemur, right in time for his voice to crack and his days as a singer to be temporarily suspended. He is reassigned to Robinton to run errands, under the cover of being apprenticed to the drummers, and demonstrates his keen insights into the machinations of others, which is likely why Robinton snapped him up as soon as possible.

**Dragondrums: Chapters 2-3: Content Notes: Bullying, abuse**

Chapter Two has Piemur quite happy about his new assignment and contemplating the situation in the South - Piemur surmises that those exiled aren't just sitting on their heels, enjoying the Southern weather, before the distraction of bubbly pies from the kitchen pulls him to Silvina. Who is utterly unconvinced about him becoming a drummer (and possibly not much about his affectation of sorrow for the change in his situation), but who does give him some fresh hot pies and some clothes from the storehouse that he will likely grow into. At the meal table, Piemur adroitly manipulates his table companions for eight bubbly pies, before almost interrupting the assignments when he hears someone he does not like is being assigned to Shonagar, and so he misses his official assignment to the drums. Lest we think Olodkey and the drums are immune from the abusive culture of the Hall, the senior journeyman, Dirzan, removes all doubt.

> "So, we get saddled with you, eh, Piemur? I'll tell you this, you watch your step with our Master. Quickest man in the world with a drumstick, and he doesn't always use it on the drums!"

Well, then, I'm sure Piemur will get along just fine.[/sarcasm]

Chapter Three ascends to the drumheights, where Piemur is informed that since he's the newest apprentice to be assigned, he's responsible for keeping all the big drums polished. And that he has drum code to memorize, a full column's worth of measures and beats, under Dirzan's close scrutiny. Menolly's appearance to borrow him as a runner is a welcome relief from not being able to do anything but study, After changing to riding gear and saddling his runner (demonstrating his heritage as a herder before coming to be a harper), they're off, Piemur full of questions that he has no intention of asking.

> All the way down to the sea hold, Piemur kept his mouth shut. He'd be scorched if he'd ask her why they were going there. He doubted that the sole purpose of this excursion was to see if he could ride runners or keep his mouth shut. [...] This reticent, assured Menolly on Harper business was quite different from the girl who let him feed her fire lizards, and a long stride from his recollections of the shy and self-aching newcomer to the Harper Hall three Turns back.

Well, how nice to know that three Turns have passed since the end of Dragonsinger. Clearly, nothing important could have happened to Menolly in those three years that would be worth mentioning or telling as part of this story. Like how the new journeyman fit in with her companions, or whether Audiva turned out to be a competent player and possibly apprenticed to the Hall herself on Menolly's recommendation, or whether Menolly has become a one-woman wrecking ball against the institutional sexism of the Harper Hall, giving Robinton headaches with her complaints. But no, that's all for nothing, as it's Piemur's turn to be the main character.

Sebell arrives, laden with sacks of herbs, and quite tanned from the sun, and is informed of Piemur's status change in the hall, which Sebell picks up all the implications of.

> Sebell threw an arm across Piemur's shoulders, telling him to cheer up, and draped his other arm about Menolly. Then he guided them toward the hold stables.  
>  There was a look on Sebell's face that suggested to Piemur that the companionable arm about his shoulders had been an excuse for the one about Menolly's. The observation cheered Piemur for he knew something no other apprentice did. Maybe not even Master Robinton. Or did he?

And now we're setting up love plots for Menolly, since she's obviously comfortable enough now to be thinking about romantic thoughts, and perhaps more importantly, old enough for it not to seem horribly creepy. And Piemur seems to enjoy the feel of knowing what others do not. I think he's going to become one of Robinton's spymasters once he hits journeyman.

The ride, however, makes him sore in all the wrong places, and after a bath, salve, and sleep, he's still sore. Not enough for it to distract him from being able to beat out the column of drum measures from before, for which he receives a new set as reward, but enough to see Oldive, whom he cannot pry any information out of.

As messages come in, Piemur finds he's not able to decipher the messages at speed, being either too slow to recognize it or without the necessary knowledge. So he applies himself to the task of learning the drummer language.

> Infuriated to be in a position to know more and unable to exercise the advantage to the full, he memorized two columns of drum measures. If his zeal surprised Dirzan, it irritated his fellow apprentices. They presented him with several all too forceful arguments against too much application on his part. Piemur had always relied on being able to outrun any would-be adversaries, but he discovered that the was no place to run to in the drumheights. While nursing his bruises, he stubbornly learned off three more columns, though he kept this private, tempering his recitations to Dirzan. Discretion, he was learning, is required on many different levels.

And failure again on having a main character get through a book without being abused. We might manage the "named female avoids abuse" by virtue of not following Menolly, but my hopes aren't high. I'm also a bit lost on the motivation for the bullying, as "jealousy of someone studying and doing well" doesn't really seem to be a sufficient reason.

_[The comments on the original point out that there are plenty of reasons for this to be the case - Tall Poppy Syndrome, as pointed out with Menolly and the Mean Girls in the last book, the toxic Harper culture, more than a few different ways that this manifests into people being beaten for being too good at what they're doing. Younger-me is tapping their toes at me with a frown and wondering how older-me forgot some important part of our own childhood.]_

So Piemur gets sent off to a minehold on an errand, which confuses him some about why he's not going by dragon, until he arrives. Soon afterward, dragons from Southern appear, in violation of their exile, and proceed to try and intimidate the miners into turning over gemstones to them - gemstones that Piemur received hurriedly before the miner went out to talk to T'ron. (T'ton?) The sapphires in question are set into Master badges, giving Piemur more to speculate on. Realizing he might draw suspicion to himself as a harper, Piemur rapidly transforms himself into a nondescript person after hiding the gems in his boots.

> "You there!"  
>  The peremptory tone irritated Piemur. N'ton never spoke like that, even to a kitchen drudge.  
>  "Sor?" Piemur unbent and started around at the Oldtimer, hoping his anxious expression masked the anger he really felt. Them he glanced apprehensively at the Miner, saw a harsh wariness in the man's eyes and added in his best hillhold mumble, "Sor, he was that sweated, I've had a time cleaning him up."  
>  "You've other work to do," said the Miner in a cold voice, jerking his head toward the cothold.  
>  "A day too late, am I, Miner? Well, there's been yesterday's work and this morning's."

Piemur hightails it to the cothold, to find the Miner's private quarters ransacked, and he is able to observe the reason for T'ron's visit.

> Six miners were squatting or kneeling, carefully chipping rough dark stone and dirt from the blue crystals possibly within. As Piemur watched, one of the miners rise, extending the palm of his hand toward the Miner. T'ron intercepted the gesture and held the small object up to the sun. Then he gave an oath, clenching his fist. For a moment, Piemur thought that the Oldtimer was going to throw the stone away.  
>  "Is this all you're finding here now? This mine produced sapphires the size of a man's eye-"  
>  [...the Miners continue to produce sub-par gems...]  
>  "I'm not interested in dust, Miner, or flawed crystals." He held up his clenched fist. "I want good, sizable sapphires."

T'ron's efforts net him six small sapphires, and the miners are angry until they see that Piemur has been able to keep safe all their efforts, and at their supper, they have a joyous noise. And that ends Chapter 3.

I think this is supposed to be a reason why Piemur has to be the main character for this book, since a young man doesn't draw attention like a young woman would, and Piemur is cleverer than anyone by half, so he can do these things, and connect information, that Menolly couldn't. 

And Piemur could have these adventures off camera, reporting back to Menolly and Robinton at the appropriate times, and the information that is going to be communicated (Southern riders going north in violation of exile, also, trying to bully and intimidate miners into giving them gemstones) is the same. So I'm still not convinced that it has to be Piemur. 

As an aside, that line about how N'ton wouldn't speak in the way T'ron did, even to kitchen drudges, not only is it a callback to Lessa in Dragonflight, but it's an indicator that being part of the kitchen staff anywhere is clearly being part of a lower caste, with all the implied freedom to abuse them these things entail.

Back to the plot. I applaud the Southern riders for figuring out how toothless F'lar's exile threat really is in the face of hyperspace-hopping dragons, who can even time-twist themselves to avoid being seen should they run into a patrol anywhere. The tactic of finding isolated and supposedly helpless Crafters also makes sense when you want to extort something. But gemstones? Gems are not fungible - there needs to be a fence or some alliance where the gems can be converted into useful goods, which can then be shipped to Southern. Which requires nobody getting suspicious about large orders or frequency of orders from particular places, or about the sudden wealth that is driving these extra purchases. There's likely more to this than just an intimidation campaign, and judging from T'ron's reaction to his gems, he's not asking for gems so they can be used in some manner other than currency. We're probably not going to see the bigger picture from Piemur's perspective, but there is going to be something either set in motion or already continued when Piemur returns with the information. It would be nice if we had, say, a journeywoman who we were familiar with to help us along the way.


	3. Runaway Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Runaway Baby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ_Z7lE1gPc), which is all about the difference between what someone says and what they mean.

Last time, Piemur's quick thinking saved a pot of oatmeal...and some precious gems, from falling into the hands of the Southern Weyr, which has been busily flaunting their exile through intimidation and trade with at least one sympathetic Hold from the North. We're still not sure exactly why it's Piemur who is called to be the viewpoint character for this book, but there has been at least one attempt at justifying it.

**Dragondrums: Chapter Four: Content Notes: Abuse, self-harm**

Chapter 4 opens with one of Menolly's fire lizards arriving to Piemur, carrying the emotion that people are worried about him. Piemur reassures the lizard and sends back a note explaining he is delayed and adds in drum measures what delays him. I still have to think this drum code is analogous to Morse Code in some way, but it keeps being described in measures that mean things, which suggests it isn't a code based on an alphabet script, but on an ideographic one. And speaking of writing, I'm not entirely sure at this point whether Pernese writing is alphabetic or ideographic. I've been assuming it's alphabetic, but perhaps I'm wrong.

_[As a general rule, drum code makes zero sense, and the more we learn about it, the less sense it makes. We'll get into the details of it later, as more and more of it gets revealed, but drum code makes no musical or communicative sense at all. It was pretty clearly designed a a thing that wasn't going to need more than a handwave to talk about, which will make trouble when a later author tries to give it a sensible backstory.]_

Anyway, Piemur has to stay the night with the miners because T'ron delayed things that it would be too dark to go back, so the miners ask him for a song. Piemur explains his voice, and the miners get the spoken word poetry jam version of the newest songs from the Hall. Upon his return the next day (a ride that "all but forced his voice back up to the treble range"), Piemur reports to Robinton, which appears a happy affair until Piemur mentions his knowledge that the sapphires are for new masterharpers, and that with a fire lizard of his own, perhaps T'ron could have been handled.

> The Harper's face altered and the flash on his eyes had nothing to do with amusement. Now Piemur couldn't imagine what had prompted him to say such a thing. He didn't even date look away from the Harper's severe gaze, although he wanted more than anything else to creep away and hide from his Master's disapproval. He did stiffen, fully expecting a blow for such impertinence.  
>  "When you can keep your wits about you as you did yesterday, Piemur," said Master Robinton after an interminable interval, "you prove Menolly's good opinion of your potential. You have also just proved the main criticism the Hall masters have expressed. I do not disapprove of ambition, nor the ability to think independently, but," and suddenly his voice lost the cold displeasure, "presumption is unforgivable. Presuming to criticize a dragonrider is the most dangerous offense against discretion. Further," and the Harper's finger was raised in warning, "you are rushing toward a privilege you have by no means earned. Now, off with you to Master Olodkey and learn the proper drum measure for 'Oldtimer.'"  
>  The kindly note in his tone was almost too much for Piemur, who could have more easily borne blows and a tirade for his transgressions. He made his way to the door as fast as his leaden legs could bear him.  
>  "Piemur!" Robinton's voice checked him as he fumbled for the latch. "You did handle yourself very well at the Minehold. Only do," and the Harper sounded as resigned as Master Shonagar often had, "do please try to guard your quick tongue!"  
>  "Oh, sir, I'll try as hard as I can, really I will!" His voice cracked ignominiously, and he spun around the door so that the Harper wouldn't see the tears of shame in his eyes.

think this is practicality being expressed to Piemur - criticize not those things that keep us alive from the deadly rain, lest their benevolence overlook us in a crisis, but it's also interesting how Robinton continues to be portrayed as someone who can evoke emotion and desired results through the modulation of his voice. He switches back and forth between stern and kindly when dealing with apprentices with practiced ease and skill. It's the same skill that comes in handy when you want to gaslight someone or manipulate them, which Robinton does without hesitation or remorse in earlier times. I still don't have a firm grasp on what Robinton actually believes, because I can't really trust that the Robinton we see through other people's eyes is really who he is, or whether he has an incredibly polished public persona and an intensely private life. It could all very well be an act, and to have someone like that at the head of the news and propaganda arm of Pern means, well, that everyone should be trying to curry favor with him so that he sees them in a positive light.

I will say with certainty, however, that Robinton's disciplinary methods are superior to the other Masters'.

> The Harper was so right: he had to learn to think before he spoke: he never should have blurted out that unfortunate criticism of dragonriders. He'd've rated a right sound beating from any other Master. Master Domick wouldn't have hesitated a moment, nor even languid Master Shonagar, whose hand he'd felt many a time for his brashness.  
>  [...]  
>  Piemur gave his own ear a clout that made his eyes swim and then started down the corridor.

You can tell just how common beatings are in this Hall when Piemur feels the need to self-harm before he feels sufficiently chastised for his behavior. Which is something I would assume Robinton knows about, and therefore approves of. Which calls into question his previous acts of discipline - is he just setting himself up as the kind, or at least less physically abusive, one, or does he genuinely believe that beatings are unnecessary to enforce discipline? In all cases, Robinton, you have a serious problem on your hands, and some senior staff turnover is the first step toward fixing it.

_[Furthermore, the farther we get into these books, the more it becomes clear that criticizing dragonriders should not only be necessary, but frequent, given how many of the people who are above others in the social hierarchy behave in reprehensible ways, and that Harpers, presumably, are the people with the social clout to be able to do it without getting their heads removed or their bodies burnt to ash.]_

Returning to the plot, Piemur has to figure out how to collect the appropriate measure for "Oldtimer" (still a slur) without tripping the antagonism of Dirzan or the other apprentices, while also having to deal with the hazing of drum polishing and being conveniently blamed for loose lips any time a drum message (theoretically private, but understood by all the journeymen and masters) starts becoming a hot topic of gossip. When he protests, Dirzan beats him. Piemur believes there's another apprentice that's deliberately gossiping about him and making trouble with Dirzan, but even if he knows who it is, he decides that it's not worth going to Robinton, Menolly, or Sebell about it, last they consider him unfit in the ways of discretion.

And right now, we seem to have the Spear Counterpart of the Mean Girl Squad story that was present in all of Dragonsinger. For vaguely-defined reasons, supposedly including jealousy, but at least partially, if not mostly, because of an entrenched culture of abuse, the new apprentice is being hazed and attacked by others in their department, and, for various reasons, they feel they cannot go to the people who can make the abuse stop, because they will not be taken seriously without ironclad proof. Even when Menolly comes to get Piemur to play ears at a Gather in Igen, and provides him with an opportunity to tell all, complete with a clear signal that she would believe him over rumors and Dirzan, Piemur decides not to say anything out of misplaced concern. Poor communication lengthens plot points unnecessarily.

_[With time and experience, I understand more why Piemur might not have gone to anyone around him about this, because unless the environment can be changed such that all potential instances of bullying are stopped, all complaining is going to do is make the bullying worse and farther out of sight. It's the same problem someone might encounter about being bullied at school and away from school. I still think this is a terrible decision, plot-wise, given that Piemur's supposed weakness about "discretion" and his good friendship with Menolly could lead to saying something, but also I think that if Menolly suspects this is the case, she should go to Robinton with her concerns. Maybe she did, and Robinton thinks there's a lesson to be learned in Piemur learning when to speak up for himself, but if that's the tack he took, then he's even more of a terrible person than before. There's a significant part of this book that is allowed to continue because it's very clear that the Harper Hall encourages bullying from the top all the way down to the bottom and nobody with any authority to stop it is intervening. Because most of them are participating.]_

It's Piemur's first time on a dragon, and N'ton has come to collect and transport them. N'ton offers some empathy for Piemur's voice change, and has Menolly demonstrate how to properly mount a dragon. Piemur returns empathy by wondering whether boots on Lioth's shoulders hurt his hide, to which N'ton laughs and says no, but Lioth thanks him for the worry. Sebell gives Piemur the rundown on what _between_ feels like, coupled with the actual experience, and then they're at the Gather. Well, more properly, above the Gather...

> "It is scary to look down," Menolly's voice said in his ear. "It's worse when they... ahhhhh..."  
>  Piemur felt his stomach drop and, to his horror, his seat seemed to leave the dragon's neck. He gasped and clutched more tightly at Sebell, feeling the man's diaphragm muscles move as he chuckled.  
>  "That's what I mean!" said Menolly. "N'ton says it's only air currents, pushing the dragons up or letting them down."  
>  "Oh, is that all?" Piemur managed to get the words out in a rush, but his voice betrayed him. "All" cane or in a two-octave crack.  
>  Menolly didn't laugh, and he felt more kindly toward her than at any other time in their association.

Empathy! Menolly still has it! Whoo!

There is landing, and distribution of money, and Piemur wanders, listening for interesting conversation. He doesn't get much but a nap. Evening injects vitality into the Gather, and after dinner and some teasing from Menolly, Piemur takes his harper's turn on gitar. In between turns, while the audience asks for Menolly to sing, Piemur has better luck with interesting conversations, about Southern people coming north and bartering for goods with gems, goods, and even fire lizard eggs. Piemur is entranced by Menolly's singing, and his critical ear says three Turns with Shonagar has improved her singing a lot. He also notices how Menolly distributes singing by herself along with singing duets and group songs with the other Harpers, so that nobody feels slighted or that they're just accompaniment for her.

With the Gather done, there's still more action to be had (although Piemur does get another nap in, so it's technically into the next day), as the Brown Rider Rapist, now healed, has arrived to take Menolly, Sebell, and Piemur to the Hatching at Benden that will happen today. One hop later, and the three are having breakfast with Mirrim, after the care and feeding of fire lizards is taken care of. Piemur is initially soured on Mirrim, but Menolly asks him to keep an open mind, and the three learn that F'lar and Lessa's child, Felessan, is standing as a candidate today. Which makes him... ten, if the math adds up. Maybe thirteen? Still, awfully young. After the time-skipped Weyrs came forward, apparently F'lar is back to being okay with very young children as dragon candidates. The Harpers are drafted into setting up tables and keeping the guests fed as Mirrim keeps the kitchen moving, which helps Piemur reassess Mirrim and understand she's not exaggerating about her duties.

As the tables finish, the Hatching begins, and everyone has good seats to see the candidates and their eggs. Felessan Impresses a bronze, which makes his parents happy - the family lineage will continue on and their son will eventually be a Weyrleader himself, no doubt - but there is an irregularity again at this Hatching. There's one green dragon that isn't interested in the boys that have been presented to her...

> "She's going to hurt herself," said Mirrim in an agitated mutter and pushed past the three people seated between her and the stairs. "She'll bruise her wings on the walls."  
>  The little green did hurt herself, slipping off the first step and banging her muzzle so sharply on the stone that she let out a cry of pain, echoed by a fierce bugle from Ramoth who began to move across the sands.  
>  "Now, listen here, you silly thing, the boys you want are out there on the Ground. Turn yourself around and go back to them," Mirrim was saying as she made her way down the steps to the little green. Her fire lizards, calling out in wildly ecstatic buglings, halted her. She starred for a long moment at the antics of her friends, and then, her expression incredulous, she looked down at the green hatchling determinedly attacking the obstacle of steps. "I can't!" Mirrim cried, so panic-stricken that she slipped on the steps herself and slid down three before her flailing hands found support. "I can't!" Mirrim glanced about her for confirmation. "I'm not supposed to Impress. I'm not a candidate. She can't want **me!** " Awe washed over the consternation on her face and in her voice.  
>  "If it's you she wants, Mirrim, get down there before she hurts herself!" said F'lar, who had by now reached the scene, Lessa beside him.  
>  "But I'm not-"  
>  "It would seem that you are, Mirrim," said Lessa, her face reflecting amusement and resignation. "The dragon's never wrong! Come! Be quick about it, girl. She's scraping her chin raw to get to you!"  
>  With one final startled look at her Weyrleaders, Mirrim half-slid the remaining steps, cushioning the little green's chin from yet another harsh contact with the stone of the step.

Mirrim, meet Path. Path, Mirrim. And both of you, meet institutional sexism. And it involves the girl who overcame "girls can't be Harpers" arguing that Mirrim being a dragonrider is a problem. The offered issue is that "Greens are fighting dragons", which has zero content behind it, and the idea that Mirrim is better needed in the Weyr instead of a fighting wing also really has no explanation behind it. We're just supposed to accept that there's an obvious reason why Mirrim should not be on a fighting dragon and instead should be running the Weyr kitchens. I can't find it, textually, which means its probably the sexism that seems to be woven into every part of Pernese life as the reason why "everyone knows" Mirrim in a fighting wing is a bad idea. I also think it's dirty pool that it's Piemur who espouses the progressive notion, rather than Menolly, who is a far better character to argue for Mirrim's placement as correct.

_[The Dragonriders of Pern have very Protgaonist-Centered Morality problems. Whomever is the protagonist gets to be the most moral, even when it wouldn't make sense. Like here, where Piemur would be the one to espouse the traditional "girls can't" mentality, but if he did that, it would call into question his staunch support of Menolly, who broke through "girls can't". But Menolly is very much the wrong person to be espousing "girls can't," because she already knows they can. What I think would have made better sense for this entire sequence would have been for people to be grumbly about Mirrim's abrasive personality now having a dragon behind it, instead of being limited to dealing with her in the ktichens. But that would also potentially cast the Approved, Moral dragonriders in a negative light, and so we end up with someone ill-suited giving criticism so as to avoid having the people who are well-suited to the criticism look bad.]_

From what else we know of green dragons and their riders, Mirrim also gets to be the butt of jokes about green dragons trying to breed all the time. And possibly to be concerned for her health and well-being, if dragonrider mating practices are as vile as the Benden Weyrleader and the Brown Rider Rapist have been to their partners. Perhaps that's the unspoken objection or fear - that by Impressing a green, Mirrim will find out that all the other riders believe that's a license to sexually assault her and blame it on their dragons and her dragon?

Whatever the objection is, we don't find out, because the official word from Robinton is that it's a great day for Pern with such an unexpected event, before he performs a party trick of guessing the vintage and year of the wine he's drinking, and the Harpers go off to play songs and listen to the gossip. There's a lot of comparison between Jaxom's Impression of Ruth (which apparently isn't that bad because Ruth is not full-size) and Mirrim's Impression of Path (which mostly gets a shrug, because Mirrim Impressed fire-lizards when she was at Southern and she's Brekke's fosterling, so it's not like she hasn't been exposed to dragons all this time), there's a lot of talk about expanding dwellings further outward, as the effects of a population boom are soon going to be felt and there isn't enough space to give all the boys their own land, and one bit of gossip about Meron getting too much of something and how ridiculous it was for a girl to Impress a dragon when there were so many eligible boys passed over. There's that institutional sexism we've come to know and love. Mirrim, for your sake, I hope you fade out of the story entirely, just so that the narrative gets no more chances to hurt you, now that it's set you up as a heterodox woman. (I also note that Mirrim is still the only female character we've met that has a consonant as the last letter of her name, so her special destiny as a dragonrider was foreshadowed, I guess.)

We're only about halfway through Chapter Four at this point, but it's a good break point to stop. Here would have also been a good point for a chapter to stop, too, but it continues on.


	4. Stan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Stan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-h9HOc2PaQ), or what happens when perceived slights build up to the point that someone lashes out in response. Except, unlike in the song, Piemur's slights are all too real. 
> 
> ([Here's the original, with Dido's sample](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY).)

Last time, Piemur was run out to play listening ears at a Gather, and was then taken to a Hatching at Benden Weyr, where he got to see Mirrim Impress a green dragon, despite not standing as a candidate, the consequences of which have yet to be seen.

**Dragondrums: Chapter Four: Content Notes: Premeditated Malicious Pranks, Neglectful Adults**

Piemur's return to the Harper Hall, after a restful sleep, is greeted by Clell and a gang in the dining hall. (Finger-snapping optional)

> "You're going to get it from Dirzan!" A pleased smirk crossed Clell's face.  
>  "Why should he get it from Dirzan, Clell?" asked Menolly, quietly coming up behind the drum apprentices. "He's been on Harper business."  
>  "He's always getting off on Harper business," replied Clell with unexpected anger, "and always with you!"  
>  Piemur raised his fist at such insolence and leaned back to make the swing count in Clell's sneering face. But Menolly was quicker; she swung the apprentice about and shoved him forcefully toward the main door.  
>  "Insolence to a journeyman means water rations for you, Clell!" she said and, without bothering to see that he'd continued out of the hall, she turned to the other three who gawked at her. "And for you, too, if I should learn of any mischief against Piemur because of this. Have I made myself perfectly clear? Or do I need to mention the incident to Master Olodkey?"  
>  The cowed apprentices murmured the necessary assurances and, at her dismissal, lost themselves in the throng of other apprentices.  
>  "How much trouble have you been having in the drumheights, Piemur?"  
>  "Nothing I can't handle," said Piemur, wondering when he could get back at Clell for that insult to Menolly.  
>  "Water rations for you, too, Piemur, if I see so much as a scratch on Clell's face."  
>  "But he..."

Umm... that's unexpected. Not the "poor communication prolongs plot points and causes unnecessary pain" part, but those three years as a journeywoman have clearly changed Menolly. The apprentice in Dragonsinger was reluctant to pull her rank as a noble daughter to take command of the Mean Girl Squad and put their efforts to better use, or even to try and shield herself from the worst of their excesses. This journeywoman has zero hesitation at pulling rank on the apprentice and assigning discipline to him over backtalk. (Not that it's effective discipline - in the dining hall, Piemur notes the other apprentices smuggling food for their disciplined comrade.) Now, it could be that Menolly could see the brawl about to develop, with Piemur exercising no subtlety about his intent to punch out Clell, and stepped in so as to prevent it, but that's a significant change of characterization for Menolly. The security of her rank must be contributing quite a bit to this. Too bad we didn't get to see any of it.

After food, where his normal choir companions ask about whether he's doing well in the drumheights, Piemur returns to his lessons, and the need to polish the drums, and then finally to his quarters... to find that the other apprentices went into his room and pissed on everything he had there. Since he's been gone, it's also had an extra couple of days to ripen and add fragrance to injury. Dirzan allows Piemur to take it all to the washing room, where Piemur plots revenge, even if he has to suffer a month of water rations for staining new clothes. The unexpected laundry attracts Silvina's attention.

> "What are you doing in here at this time of day, Piemur?" asked Silvina, attracted by the splashing and pounding.  
>  "Me?" The force of his tone brought Silvina right into the room. "My roommates play dirty jokes!"  
>  Silvina gave him a long searching look as her nose told her what kind of dirty jokes. "Any reason for them to?"  
>  In a split second Piemur decided. Silvina was once of the few people in the Hall he could trust. She instinctively knew when he was shamming, so she'd know now that he was being put on. And he had an unbearable need and urge to release some of the troubles he had suppressed. This last trick of the apprentices, damaging his good new clothes, hurt more than he had realized in the numbness following his discovery. He'd been so proud of the fine garments, and to have them crudely soiled before he'd worn some of them to acquire honest dirt hit him harder than the slanders at his supposed indiscretions.  
>  "I get to Gathers and Impressions," Piemur drew a whistling breath through his teeth, "and I've made the mistake of learning drum measures too fast and too well."  
>  Silvina continued to stare at him, her eyes slightly narrowed and her head tilted to one side. Abruptly she moved beside him and took the washpaddle from his hands, skipping it deftly under the soaking furs.  
>  "They probably expected you back right after the Igen Gather!" She chuckled as she plunged the fur back under the water, grinning broadly at him. "So they had to sleep in the stink they caused for two nights!" Her laughter was infectious, and Piemur found his spirits lifting add he grinned back at her.

And it's good to have a moment of levity, but _I don't believe that the stated reasons are true for a second_. This really is the Spear Counterpart of the Mean Girl Squad in the last book, but the reasons there were just as spurious and dismissed as low-grade jealousy as they are here, and both sequences are escalating in the conflict despite nonaggression from the people being victimized. The parallels should be far too uncomfortable for Menolly, even with her limited exposure to the details, to bite on the proposed explanation, since it wasn't the case for her that ignoring them would make it better.

If this is supposed to be a commentary on how "they're just jealous" _absolutely sucks_ as a justification, then bravx, certainly. Because, no matter how often the adults use that as the excuse, it isn't. As someone who regularly got pranked by people in the same Boy Scout troop, it was never about jealousy. It was about making someone be an outsider because they were different and "weird" and "not like us". And really, really, Menolly should be having alarm klaxons the approximate decibel level of a plane taking off right next to her ear sounding off.

So, now that Silvina knows, Piemur has a confidante, but Dirzan is apparently unwilling to make the changes, or is being narratively prevented from doing so.

> Afterward, Piemur thought that if Dirzan had ignored the mischief the way Piemur intended to, the whole incident might be forgotten.

It wouldn't. Really, Piemur, it wouldn't. And you, of all people, probably know that at heart.

> But Dirzan reprimanded the others in front of the journeymen and put them on water rations for three days. The sweet candle cleared the quarters of the stench, but nothing would ever sweeten the apprentices toward Piemur after that. It was almost as if, Piemur thought, Dirzan was determined to ruin any chance Piemur had of making friends with Clell or the others.  
>  Though he did his best to stay out of their vicinities, he was constantly having benches shoved into his shins in the study room, his feet trod on everywhere, his ribs painfully stuck with drumsticks or elbows. His furs were sewn together three nights running, and his clothes so frequently dipped in the roof gutters that he finally asked Brolly to make him a locking mechanism for his press that he alone could open. Apprentices were not supposed to have any private containers, but Dirzan made no mention of the addition to Piemur's box.  
>  In a way, Piemur found a certain satisfaction in being able to ignore the nuisances, rising above all the pettiness perpetrated on him with massive and complete disdain. He spent as much time as he could studying the drum records, tapping his fingers on his fur even as he was falling asleep to memorize the times and rhythms of the most complicated measures. He knew the others knew exactly what he was doing, and there was nothing they could do to thwart him.

Because, when you have no allies anywhere that can help you, eventually you learn to shell up and ignore the things that are happening, instead of telling people about them. And you stop giving a shit about what other people think of you, too. Which Piemur's choral mates pick up on and try to get Piemur to talk to them, or to anybody else, about what's going on. Which he doesn't. And, as Piemur does, you stop talking to the people who really should be able to help you. Piemur wants to tell Menolly about what's really going on, but Menolly will only tell Dirzan, and Dirzan has already repeatedly pointed out, in very certain terms, that he has no interest at all in stopping what is happening to Piemur. All his interest apparently lies in not having to see what's going on, so that he doesn't have to do anything about it.

_[This is, regrettably, far too true, both for children being bullied in school with adults that don't seem to be interested or able to help, and for adults stuck in bad and abusive relationships where they can't get enough resources together to break out of it. Many abusers are very good at isolating and making their victims feel like they don't have anyone who will support them, even if those other people around are signaling as hard as they can that they will be very supportive. It can sometimes take a while for the victim to be able to take advantage of that help and to want to take steps toward getting rid of their abuser. Having supportive friends is the best thing in those cases.]_

> Piemur could see clearly now that his well-founded reputation for mischief and game playing were coming back at him when he least expected, or even less, deserved it. He'd no one but himself to fault, so he'd just have to chew it raw and swallow.

This is another issue with the characterization in this novel. The Piemur we met in Dragonsinger was a bit mischievous, who liked to bargain hard and who would scam extra bubbly pies for his friends (and then from his friends), and he always liked to know things and appear in places where he wasn't supposed to be, but there was never an indication that Piemur was in any way a kind of person that was indiscriminate with his tongue or the knowledge he had - he might use it to better his position or help his friends, but he never comes across as someone who does things without thinking about them. How Piemur has managed to garner his reputation as a blabbermouth would have to have occurred in the three-year interim. If it did, we have yet another case of an informed ability or characteristic appearing, like Menolly's newfound confidence. This is not good storytelling - things can be time-skipped around, but if things change in that time, there should be some method by which the reader can be signaled that things have changed.

The escalating damage in this scenario is rather far too close to reality, though. The other boys continue to torment the newcomer, the person who should be noticing and stopping it is turning a blind eye, and there's nobody around that seems to have much of an interest in protecting or listening to Piemur. It's breeding in him the kind of personality that will be absolutely useless as a Harper, if, that is, one thinks that a Harper is supposed to help others and keep an ear out for discontent or other issues with regard to how the world is operating. If we're training Piemur to be a member of the senior staff here at the Hall, or even apparently, some of the junior staff, then things are working out just fine.

Admittedly, at this point, it's now a balance between Poor Communication Exacerbates Problems and All Adults are Useless. Neither is particularly a good way of instilling drama by themselves, and with Menolly right there, it rings extremely hollow and false that Piemur would be going through all of this in the first place.

Chapter 4 closes here, but we haven't hit the bottom of this yet. The worst is yet to come.


	5. Only a Plank Between One and Perdition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Only A Plank Between One and Perdition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp3LvId4FKw). That's basically how close Piemur comes to dying in this chapter. Not exactly the kind of thing you would find in a YA novel of the time.
> 
> ([The original, in all its PS1 glory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvV7IUNra3k).)

Last time, the antagonism against Piemur escalated to new heights, and all the adults around who could do something about it were otherwise occupied, unknowing, prevented by the narrative from acting, or actively aiding and abetting the drum apprentices in their campaign against Piemur. 

As one might guess, at some point, these things must come to a head. 

**Dragonflight: Chapter 5: Content Notes: Attempted Murder, Willfully Neglectful Adults**

Chapter Five begins with Piemur having to run a message to Master Oldive as Nabol has requested his presence to attend to the dying Lord Meron. Rokayas, the journeyman on duty, is suspicious that Piemur is always running messages, but he ships him off to collect Master Oldive's reply. After collecting the response, Piemur heads back up the stairs to the heights.

> He was halfway up the second flight when he felt his right foot slide on the stone. He tried to catch himself, but his forward motion and the stretch of his legs were such that he hadn't a hope of saving himself from a fall. He tried to grab the stone railing with his right hand but it, too, was slick. He was thrown hard against the stone risers, wrenching thighs and hips, cracking his ribs painfully as he slid. He could have sworn that he heard a muffled laugh. His last conscious thought as his chin hit the stone and bit his tongue hard was that someone had greased the rail and steps.  
>  [...Dirzan roughly wakes Piemur and is unsympathetic to his plight...]  
>  "Greased! Greased?" Dirzan exclaimed in acid disbelief. "A likely notion. You're always pelting up and down these steps. It's a wonder you haven't hurt yourself before now. Can't you get up?"  
>  [...Piemur wants to reply, but he's fighting the urge to vomit over everything...]  
>  "You said it was greased?" Dirzan's voice came from about his head. The agitated tone hurt Piemur's skull.  
>  "Step there and handrail..." Piemur gestured with one hand.  
>  "There's not a sign of grease! On your feet!" Dirzan sounded angrier than ever.  
>  "Did you find him, Dirzan?" Rokayas called. The voice of the duty journeyman made Piemur's head throb like a message drum. "What happened to him?"  
>  "He fell down the steps and knocked himself **between**. Dirzan was thoroughly disgusted. "Get up, Piemur!"  
>  "No, Piemur, stay where you are," said Rokayas, and his voice was unexpectedly concerned.

Freeze it.

Okay, so Dirzan is not, apparently, very smart, or his antagonism to Piemur is so strong that it prevents him from noticing something that Rokayas is able to pick up on immediately - Piemur is concussed. I doubt that Piemur is exhibiting subtle signs of his head injury to both of them and that Rokayas is using a hidden knowledge store collected from Silvina to determine this. Dirzan's lack of concern for an apprentice in his care should raise big red flags about how he was able to become a journeyman in the first place, and even bigger ones about whether he will be able to maintain that rank in the face of this latest incident. By this point, yes, asshole seems to be the default personality, but there should be at least a little bit of practical or self-serving concern on Dirzan's part.

> "He said it was greased! Feel it yourself, Rokayas, clean as a drum!"  
>  "Too clean! And if Piemur fell on his way back, he was **between** a long time. Too long for a mere slip. We'd better get him to Silvina."  
>  [...Dirzan complains, but helps Rokayas get Piemur to Silvina, while Rokayas insinuates Dirzan has been complicit in the bullying of Piemur...]  
>  "He knocked himself **between** , Silvina, probably for a good twenty minutes or more." Rokayas was saying, his urgent tine cutting through Dirzan's petulant complaint.  
>  "He claimed there was grease!"  
>  "There was grease," said Silvina. "Look at his right shoe, Dirzan. Piemur, do you feel nauseated?"

Yes, yes he does, and he proceeds to vomit all of the contents of his stomach when someone unwisely sits him up. Again, Silvina notices what Dirzan hasn't or chooses not to. And yet, Dirzan persists in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary. Like he has ignored the other signs that things are, well, getting out of hand. And in the same manner that the narrative has made Menolly unable to put two and three together, Silvina appears to be not allowed to draw on her own past experience (including Menolly) to drive to the correct conclusion until something flagrant happens that cannot be ignored.

The following blocks take place after Piemur has properly passed out again from his concussion.

> "How could you let matters get so out of hand, Dirzan?" she demanded, working on the astonished journeyman. "What sort of prank is that for apprentices to try on anyone? Piemur's not been himself, but I put that down to losing his voice and adjusting to the disappointment over the music. But this...this is...criminal!" Silvina brandished Piemur's begreased boot at Dirzan, backing the astonished journeyman against the wall, oblivious to Master Robinton's repeated query about Piemur's condition, to Menolly's precipitous arrival, her face flushed and furrowed with anxiety, and to Rokayas' delighted and amused observation.

Okay, Rokayas, you're an asshole, too, for taking schadenfreude in this situation, instead of being concerned about Piemur.

Robinton tries to take control, and Silvina will have none of it, but she does tell everyone assembled that Piemur is not head-injured past shock, concussion, and bruises and scrapes. Modern-sounding medical knowledge in an Italian city-state pastiche is odd, especially since we haven't really explored the damage a concussion can do at the time of publication for this book, but like so many other things, we're just supposed to accept it and move on.

> "A few days' rest will see him right, I'm sure. But I mean rest!"[...]"Right there! Nowhere near those murdering louts in the drumheights!"  
>  "Murdering?" Dirzan gasped an objection to her term.  
>  "He could have been killed. You know how Piemur climbs steps," she said, scowling fiercely at the journeyman.  
>  "But...but there wasn't a trace of grease on those steps or the railing. I tested them all myself!"  
>  "Too clean," said Rokayas, and earned a reprimanding glare from Dirzan. "Too clean!" Rokayas reiterated and then said to Silvina, "Piemur's decidedly [an] odd man. He learns too quickly."  
>  "And spouts off what he hears!" Dirzan spoke sharply, determined that Piemur should share responsibility for this untoward incident.

And then Dirzan is very quickly corrected on his view about that, being forced to admit Piemur has a knack for learning, with the others understanding that Piemur probably knows more than he lets on.

Here, though, you can see Dirzan's position cracking, partially because the narrative is now ready for it to do so, but also because the narrative cannot sustain such a persistent denial in the face of the evidence provided. Murderous is exactly the right word to use to describe this scenario, and it doesn't matter a whit whether Piemur takes the steps one at a time or three at a time. There will be no victim-blaming here.

_[At least, not for the chosen of the narrative. Brekke already got plenty of it, and Mirrim will continue to be a chewtoy of the narrative wherever else she appears.]_

So, the drumheights are obviously a ways up from ground level. The steps leading up and the railings have been carved out of stone. Someone has greased both steps and rails to ensure that Piemur slips and falls. Starting with the obvious, a head injury against stone, or, for that matter, an untreated broken bone from the fall could easily cause Piemur to bleed internally or externally until he dies. Piemur could break his neck or spinal column in a headfirst strike. Assuming he survives the initial contact, head injuries have the possibility of causing brain swelling, which is likely going to be fatal if untreated, especially with the Master Healer away.

That's just assuming that Piemur falls and injures himself and stops moving from that point. If Piemur retains momentum, or lands poorly on the steps, since the greased steps are about two-thirds of the way up, it's possible Piemur can fall off the staircase entirely, if the rails are carved in such a way that there are gaps between the posts. (There's no detail to this point that says how the rails and steps are carved.) Which is a very swift trip down, risking more injuries or death, depending on how sheer the drop is. Or, Piemur could bounce his way back down all those unyielding stone steps to the bottom, with the attendant risk of broken bones, bleeding, organ damage, or a broken neck with each new impact.

If you'd like to recreate the possibilities of what kind of damage an unconscious person could do to themselves with enough force, I recommend [Stair Dismount](http://secretexit.com/freeware) as a primer - sure, it's a ragdoll, but even small amounts of force can produce big scores if applied just so.

With the history of malicious pranks leading up to this, I think it wouldn't be very hard to charge the apprentices with attempted murder and Dirzan with anything from negligence to being an accessory to the attempt. His paper-thin defense ("Piemur blabs!") is a non-sequitur to the act, and even so, wouldn't justify things rising to the level of the pissed-on furs. Dirzan intends to victim-blame, first because he believes Piemur deserves it, and then increasingly to save himself from the consequences of his own inaction.

One of the constants of Pern, however, is that you do not get on the bad side of the Headwoman unless you want the full wrath of everyone to rain down upon you. I wish it were something more like "Doing bad things nets you appropriate punishment when found out," but that's not anywhere close to the reality that we've seen so far, and that injustice will continue as we find out what the punishment is.

> "Rokayas, would you help Menolly collect Piemur's things from the drumheights?" asked the Harper. His voice was mild, his manner unexceptional but, unmistakably his attitude informed Dirzan that he had misjudged Piemur's standing in the eyes of the most important people of the Hall.  
>  Dirzan offered to do the small task himself, and was denied; offered to help Menolly, who awarded him with a cool look. He desisted then, but the set look in his mouth and the controlled anger in his eyes suggested that he was going to deal sternly with the apprentices who had put him in such an invidious position. When he was unexpectedly placed on duty for the entire Feastday, he knew why the roster had been changed. He also knew better than to blame Piemur.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

_[Apply one Cocowhat directly to the forehead.]_

Robinton, why haven't you expelled all of them on the spot? The apprentices attempted murder, and the journeyman responsible for the apprentices let it happen. You can't get much bigger in terms of misconduct. Expulsion would be the least that you should do to them. If you're feeling charitable, send them back home. If not, let them work out the issues of living holdless, or send them to work in another Crafthall known for hard labor and very little prestige (the farmers, maybe?) Instead, Dirzan stays in the Harper Hall, just with his customary liberty revoked, and he's left to discipline the apprentices, which, based on what his outlook appears to be, is probably going to involve a lot of abuse, most likely physical. Because the person who is made to look bad like that, and that had let all that abuse happen already, is not likely to be above getting their hands dirty when it comes to taking out their frustration on the subordinates responsible for making them lose face.

Also, how is it that Dirzan takes away from this encounter that things were only like this because Piemur had an in with the important people of the Hall? That is skull-crushingly Too Dumb To Live territory, which, admittedly, fits Dirzan's characterization, but someone who had enough smarts to become a journeyman and be trusted with the care of apprentices should be able to draw the correct conclusion from this incident, which had nothing to do with his social status and everything to do with the apprentices in his care trying to kill someone. Of course, it would help if the punishment met the severity of the crime - if all such murder attempts as these are only punished lightly, perhaps Dirzan has a point in thinking the greatest casualty of this affair is his social status.

It really does feel like these chapters are just gender-flipped versions of what Pona, Dunca, and the Men Girl Squad did to Menolly in the last book. The idea isn't a problem, but the lazy execution that doesn't take into account the previous characterization established makes this painful to read on top of all the fractal Wrong actually happening.

_[The other possibility is that Dirzan orchestrated it himself, as pointed out in the comments of the original, and that his attitude is really more "and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that Piemur is in good with people much more powerful than I am." Which would also fit the characterization quite well for him. It still leaves us with the problem of why the discipline here is so very tiny compared to the gravity of the offense. If it was Dirzan, either prank went remarkably awry, resulting in attempted murder, and he's deliberately trying to shift blame, which should get him expelled, or he deliberately tried to murder and apprentice and cover up the crime, which should also result in expulsion at the very least. If it was an apprentice, then Dirzan is clearly not cut out for leadership material and should be either reduced in rank or sent off to one of the Holds out in the backwoods, and the apprentice at fault expelled, whether for prank or attempt at murder. It's inexcusable to see a lack of consequences here.]_

I don't think we're going to see the consequences of that decision, though, because, after some recriminations about how their advice to Piemur to be discreet put the idea in his head that he didn't have any allies to face the bullying with, the narrative pivots immediately to the next plot point once Silvina and Robinton return to his office. Oldive went to Lord Meron, who is dying, but most irritatingly to the Harpers, he refuses to name a successor, preferring a war between all the possible candidates instead of an orderly transition of power. Also, the logistics problem we mentioned a few chapters ago about T'ron gathering gemstones collects a resolution.

> "Several disquieting rumors have come to my notice. The most worrying, the fact that Nabol abounds with fire lizards..."  
>  "Nabol has no shoreline and scarcely any friends in Holds that do acquire what fire lizards are found."  
>  Robinton agreed. "They have also been ordering, and paying for, large quantities of fine cloth, wines, the delicacies of Nerat, Tillek, and Keroon, not to mention every sort of mongery from the Smithcrafthall that can be bought or bartered, quantities and qualities enough to garb, feed and supply amply every holder, cot and hold in Nabol...and don't!"  
>  "The Oldtimers!" Silvina emphasized that guess with a snap off her fingers. "T'kul and Meron were always two cuts from the same rib."  
>  "What I cannot figure out is what besides fire lizards the association gains Meron..."  
>  "You can't?" Silvina was frankly skeptical. "Spite! Malice! Scoring off Benden!"

Really, Robinton, that's not hard to guess, in both cases. If someone is buying up large quantities of things, but nobody there appears to be benefiting from them, there are a few logical conclusions to start with:

  * They're being stockpiled in the belief that those goods will become rare and valuable (which Robinton would likely already know about).
  * It's an attempt to monopolize the market so that everyone must buy through them (which is unlikely, given the way the Crafthalls scatter themselves).
  * The goods are going somewhere else as their final destination, likely as a smuggling run.



So Meron is acting as the fence, the launderer, and the middleman for the exiled dragonriders. Except, of course, people don't like and are suspicious of Meron from the last two books. Surely someone else, other than Piemur and Silvina, has come to the correct conclusion or suspicion. Maybe not F'lar, but Lessa-of-Dragonflight certainly would, since that kind of subterfuge was her trade for many years. And with someone being suspicious, they, or someone else, should be able to connect the dots about a story involving an extortion run with regard to gems from the miners and some merchant making a big sale to another that paid in gems. Or any sales at all that are paid in fire lizard eggs, since those are officially rare and tightly controlled objects. Meron would have to have a very impressive network of merchants to obfuscate the transactions enough that suspicion about what he is doing doesn't connect immediately.

Or, there's a significant amount of Holders, Crafters, and possibly even dragonriders in the North that are sympathetic to the South and either directly aid them or deliberately don't care where their goods are going or how they are being paid for. That's the possibility that Robinton is worried about, and he's going to send Piemur in to listen at Meron's Gather. That's conveniently being held at the same time as the Fort Hold Gather where the new music piece that started this book will be premiered.

That's how Chapter Five ends - Piemur unconscious, having survived a murder attempt from his peers, Dirzan likely to perpetuate the cycle of abuse that's endemic to the Harper Hall on those peers, and Robinton, under the guise of empathy at Piemur's voice change, ready to send Piemur back into dangerous situations as soon as possible. Have I mentioned lately how much this world really should have no reason at all to appeal to people?


	6. Topsy-Turvy Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Topsy-Turvy Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTSqHxPgV4), when the fools are in charge and the kings are brought low.

Last chapter, Piemur survived an attempt on his life, for which no real discipline was issued to those who were responsible, or the person who allowed it to happen.

**Dragondrums: Chapter 6: Content Notes: Getting Away With Attempted Murder, Victim-Blaming, Gaslighting**

Chapter Six resumes the action near the end of Piemur's enforced convalescence, with Silvina spoon-feeding him broth, since Piemur doesn't know what his Hall future holds.

> Piemur caught her skirt as she made a move. "There was grease on those steps, wasn't there, Silvina?" Piemur had to ask the question, because he couldn't really trust what he thought he had heard.  
>  "Indeed and there was!" Silvina frowned, pursing her lips in an angry line. Then she patted his head. "Those little sneaks saw you fall, scampered down and washed the grease off the steps and handrail...but," she added in a sharper tone, "they forgot there'd be grease on your boot as well!" Another pat on his arm. "You might say, they slipped up there!"  
>  For a moment, Piemur couldn't believe that Silvina was joshing him, and then he had to giggle.  
>  "There! That's more like you, Piemur. Now rest! That'll set you right quicker than you realize. And likely to be the last good rest you'll get for a while."

Bit of gallows humor there, eh, Silvina? Also, with Piemur asking about the grease, something tells me that Dirzan has been gaslighting him for quite a while before the murder attempt, off page.

Piemur sleeps for a while until Menolly appears with proper food for him, and they talk about the attempt and his upcoming mission.

> She grinned, then, her eyes twinkling. "Clell and the other dimglows are on water rations and they won't get to the Gather!"  
>  Piemur groaned.  
>  "And why not? They deserve restriction. Pranks are one thing, but deliberately conspiring to injure - and you could have been killed by their mischief - is an entirely different matter. Only..." and Menolly shook her head in perplexity, "...I can't think what you did to rile them so."  
>  "I didn't do anything," Piemur said so emphatically that he slopped the water glass on his tray.  
>  Rocky chirped anxiously, and Beauty took up the note in her trill.  
>  "I believe you, Piemur." She squeezed his toes where they poked the sleeping furs. "I do! And, would you also believe, that's why you had trouble? They kept expecting you to **do** some typical Piemur tricks, and you were so busy behaving for the first time since you apprenticed here, no one could credit it. Least of all Dirzan, who knew all too much about you and your ways!" She gave his toes another affectionate tweak. "And you, bursting your guts with discretion to the point where you didn't tell me or Sebell what you bloody ought to have. We didn't mean for you to stop talking altogether, you know.  
>  "I thought you were testing me."  
>  "Not that hard, Piemur. When I find out what Dirzan...no, eat all your tubers."

[No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO!](https://youtu.be/fJ9rUzIMcZQ?t=232)

_[And a cocowhat to go along with your Queen_

...several times in succession.

Before we even get to the content of this exchange, I object in the strongest terms to Menolly being used in this fashion. Yes, she's Piemur's friend, but she's only been three Turns off of her own harrowing Hall experience, and she has her entire lifetime of abuse from her father as experience toward how much pranking and malice can be dangerous and harmful. The Menolly from Dragonsinger would not be satisfied merely with restrictions on liberty and on diet as punishment for attempted murder. She probably doesn't have the authority to expel them on her own, but she shouldn't have to make too much of a case for it, either.

I also object to Menolly engaging in victim-blaming here. Firsthand experience of what being yourself results in, and having to work through the issue that such things are not the fault of the victim, no matter how much the bullies insist it is, remember? Menolly is the _very last person_ that would say "You brought this on yourself because everyone expected you to act like your reputation, so when you didn't, it was open season on you. You should have just conformed to their expectations." Bullshit. Absolute coprolite.

_[It's increasingly clear that the three-year timeskip is being used to hide the fact that character personalities already established have been contorted to the point where the person that was doesn't even exist compared to the one that is now being used for this purpose. While it's possible that Menolly has blossomed significantly into being more confidence and Piemur may have gathered a reputation for being prankish, I would have thought everyone would have been pleased at Piemur starting to take studies seriously. But I can't believe that Menolly is so over her own experiences that she'd be like this to Piemur about his. This should be sympathy and empathy, not "you brought it on yourself."]_

Finally, although it is minor compared to the flagrant fouls already committed, "bloody" as an oath is derived from "God's blood". There is no indication, anywhere, that there is any sort of religious practice on Pern, much less monotheism, and _**certainly not Christianity**_. An oath like "bloody" has zero fucking context to appear in, so it should not exist.

So. Plot. Not one to waste opportunity, Menolly informs Piemur of his upcoming trip to a Nabol Gather, where his bruises will provide extra realism to his role as an apprentice herder (a role Piemur is intimately familiar with, as he was part of a herder family before becoming a Harper). Sebell will be playing the role of the herder, and their mission is to discover why there are so many fire lizards at Nabol, whether Meron is trading with Southern Weyr, and which of Meron's heirs will be the best fit to inherit from him.

Oh, sorry...

> "Meron's trading with the Oldtimers?"  
>  "Lord Meron, lad you don't forget the title even in your thoughts...and yes, that's the possibility."

Because even if he is a slimeball in everyone's opinion, and he's done things to piss off most of them, he's a Lord Holder, dammit, and that means he must be respected with his title. Much like how criticisms of dragonriders must be suppressed to the point of not even becoming conscious thought. Even though Sebell immediately undercuts that respect, Piemur is supposed to give it.

> "He is dying then?" He'd [Piemur] been sure the message to Master Oldive was spurious.  
>  "Oh, yes, a wasting disease." Sebell's grin was malicious, and there was an unpleasant gleam in his eyes as he met Piemur's astonished gaze. "You might say, a very proper disease to fit Lord Meron's...peculiar ways!"

No details are forthcoming about the disease, but we can probably surmise it's an STD, since what we know of Meron from Dragonquest and this book is that Meron sleeps around a lot (many heirs) and sleeps with dragonrider queen riders (Kylara) who are well above his station, and, oh, is also abusive to those women (also Kylara). The way it's described by Sebell, the "wasting disease" could be HIV/AIDS, although at the time of publication, I don't believe it had yet been changed from Gay-Related Immune Disorder. If it is HIV/AIDS, with the implication that Meron is bisexual and collected it from a male partner, then Sebell and all the people, including Harpers and others not quoted in this chapter, who are taking great schadenfreude in someone they hate dying painfully, get an extra "you're a homophobic asshole" on top of their current astronomical count of sins. So why, again, is Sebell telling Piemur he has to remember to say Lord Meron, since Sebell doesn't respect Meron at all?

_[Much like with dragonriders, it's because someone who is to be a Harper needs to learn proper respect for the office, so they can do their duties, even if they think the person in that office is not worth the title. Since both Lords and dragonriders can kill someone with impunity if they feel like they're being mouthed off to, as we'll see in later books, it makes sense to ensure that the population always uses honorofics as a verbal tic.]_

Everyone has promised Master Oldive that Piemur will have a light-duty time at the Gather, so we can expect that not to happen at all as soon as Piemur gets out into the wild. Because of that, though, Piemur gets dropped off by dragon ahead of where Sebell is driving the herdbeasts and told to wait for him. Piemur hears the sounds of people coming, and hides from them to observe.

> He curled up small, hugging knees to chest, secure in the belief that he couldn't be seen.  
>  A chirrup disabused him off that notion and, startled, he glanced up and saw three pairs of fire lizard eyes gleaming at him.  
>  "Go away, you silly creatures. I'm not even here!" To prove this, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the awful nothingness of **between**.  
>  The fire lizards responded with an agitated chorus.

Piemur escapes discovery because the men with the fire lizards are uninterested in what just caused their fair to squeak frightfully. Which, yeah, moving cart, Gather, so it makes sense. However, it does raise an interesting question: Since fire lizards communicate mostly by images and emotions, is Piemur saying something like "I'm going to kill you." unintentionally when he tries to communicate that he's not here? It drove off the fair, but what will happen with a fair that doesn't have a destination? After quite the long wait, and enough time to feel somewhat sorry that he's going to Nabol instead of performing at Fort, Piemur wonders whether Sebell is anywhere nearby. In the middle of a boast about his abilities with drum measures, Piemur gets an idea.

> He groped on the ground beside him and found a rock, gave it an experimental whack against the builder that sheltered him. The resultant shins echoed about the small valley. Piemur found another rock and, rising, went to the now visible track. He beat the rocks together in the monotone code for "harper", adding the be[a]t for "where," grinning as the sharp staccato sounds reverberated. He repeated the two measures, then waited. He beat his measures again to give Sebell time to find his own rocks. Then in the pause he heard distantly a muffled reply: "journeyman comes."

Hey, that skill Piemur picked up is going to come in handy after all, not just in sending coded messages on parchment. I'd like to see more of this creative problem-solving, and less of the abuse-because-talented, please.

After another giant fair of fire lizards and humans passes by, with Piemur thinking of nothingness again, but counting and confirming that there are way too many fire lizards about, Sebell arrives and the two go to the Gather. Sebell haggles down the fee for stable space for the animals, then sends Piemur to collect fodder for the animals while others start to bargain with Sebell for the beasts.

> They got the beasts enclosed, and Piemur was sent with a worn mark of the Herdsman's Crafthall to haggle for fodder. He managed to save an eighth on the dealing, which he pocketed as any apprentice would. Sebell was already deep in bargain with one of the men while the others were examining the beasts with pinch and prod.  
>  [...]  
>  Trust a Harper to weave words well, and Piemur's respect for the journeyman increased proportionately to the elaborations of the tale he told. Sebell would have his audience believe that he merely used an old trick handed down from grandsire to grandson: a combination of herbs and grasses sweetened with just the right amount of berries and well-moistened dried fruits.

So, apparently, Piemur and Sebell are cut from the same mischievous, bargaining, advantage-gaining cloth. Which says good things about Piemur's career trajectory, assuming he doesn't end up dead from inexplicable reasons or poking his nose somewhere that gets his head cut off. I see promotions in Piemur's future, and possibly a blue sapphire. Especially since he pockets the savings, "like any apprentice would", which says a lot about how much everyone intends to take advantage of everyone else at all times. What's to stop a journeyman from shorting his apprentice and forcing the apprentice to haggle down to ridiculous amounts? And would anybody care?

Also, that thing I talked about in the last book about the Smithcrafthall's apparent monopoly on mark pieces? Utter bullshit. Which, okay, yes, Italian city-states pastiche, but holy fuck, how do you establish valuation for different Crafthall marks? It's not like there's an overarching monetary control authority that establishes the equivalencies. And marks aren't based in precious metal or gemstone values, to the best of our knowledge (except maybe Miner marks). It seems like there's no reason for the Crafthalls not to try and screw each other over in the exchange rates. "Oh, you have a Herder mark. That'll net you a thirty-second of this Smithcraft mark, so I'll need four more of them for this thing that costs an eighth, since I only deal in Smith marks." And other such shenanigans. There's no real rhyme or reason to this, and even a little bit of worldbuilding and thought would have been very welcome.

Sebell sells the beasts at a significant profit, and the two Harpers go off to their real missions. Piemur counts lizards, realizing that most of the lizards are browns, blues, and greens, and listens into a conversation that suggests that Meron is distributing fire lizard eggs, all right, but eggs from green fire-lizards. Piemur puts two and three together and follows the people conversing to the main Hold gates to confirm his suspicions. He can't see inside, but he does see people leaving, concealing things that could be egg pots under their clothes. 

A happy accident gives Piemur another piece in the puzzle.

> Then three carts, heavily laden to judge by the straining of the burden beats struggling up the ramp, forced the smithmaster to one side. The guard waved the carts toward the kitchen courtyard. The last cart jammed a wheel against the ramp parapet, the driver thudding his stick against the burden beast's rump.  
>  "Wheel be jammed." yelled Piemur, not liking to see any animal beaten for what was not its fault.  
>  He jumped forward to help guide the carter. The man now backed his stolid beast, swinging its head left. Piemur, setting his shoulder to the tailgate, gave a push in the proper direction. He also tried to peek under the to see what on earth was being delivered to the Hold on a Gather day when most business was fine in the Gather meadow. Before he could get a good look, the cart had picked up speed as it reached more level ground.  
>  He was past the guards, arguing with the smith and paying no more attention to the procession of carts. Ducking quickly to the side of the cart away from the carter, Piemur gained access to the Hold proper.

For once, empathy turns out to be useful to the plot, instead of a commodity to be shared only with intimate friends.

(Nitpicking again - to the residents of Pern, Terra doesn't exist, so the phrase "what on earth" wouldn't, either. "what on Pern", perhaps, but not "what on earth.")

And from here, we step into a boys' adventure story again. Actually, that's not true, we've always been in a boys' boarding school story, it's just that the consequences and the pranking went well beyond what a hazing for that kind of story would have gone through. This looks like it could be the longest attempt at this style of writing, since previously it was limited to a chapter or two as a breather here and there. The previous attempts worked out pretty well, and were good breaks. Considering we're only a chapter out from a murder attempt, we might need a bigger break this time around.

Once inside the gate, Piemur snags some drudge coveralls and is immediately put to work helping unload the carts, gutting food, doing dishes, and then helping with a scramble when the kitchen is informed that Meron is dining in his quarters, instead of elsewhere. Piemur has confirmed to him that Meron has not picked an heir, and is apparently playing them all against each other. Having cleared out rooms full of an extraordinarily foul funk, confirmation of his theory comes with the largest room.

> The foul odor hung heaviest in the last of the four large rooms that comprised the Lord Holder's private apartments in Nabol. It was then that Piemur blessed the happenstance that had sent him in here ahead of the others. Reposing on the hearth were nine pots of exactly the size in which fire lizard eggs were placed to keep warm and harden. Mastering his urge to gag, Piemur ducked across the room to investigate. One pot was set slightly apart from the others and, lifting the lid, Piemur scraped enough sand away to see the mottled shell before he covered it carefully over. He took a quick look at the contents of the first pot in the other group. Yes, the egg was smaller and of a different hue. He'd rather every mark he owned that the separate pot contained a fire lizard queen egg.

Observation! A useful skill, indeed. What I'd like to know is whether Piemur is currently reinventing the wheel, considering the Weyrs would have many hundreds of years of experience looking at eggs to see what kind of dragons will pop out of them. And everyone else would have the collected experience of all the attendance at Hatchings to also make proper deductions. If fire lizards are kin to dragons, it should follow their egg patterns are kin, as well. So this feels like it should read more definitively, instead of as a very good guess.

So what does Piemur decide to do with this revelation of so many fire lizard eggs?

> Quickly he switched pots. Shielding his actions with his body in case Besel [another drudge] ventured this far to check on him, he dumped the sand with deft speed into the cinder shovel, removed the egg and shivers it up under his coverall and into his shirt above his belt. Poking among the cinders, he selected one that had a slightly rounded end and nearly inserted it into the egg pot, replaced sand and lid and stood the rifled put back in line, straightening up just as the woman crossed the threshold.

…Steal one? Huh? Why do that? If someone notices, then there's a lot of heat to have to avoid until it dies down, and being the new guy, Piemur is going to get immediate suspicion. And a few chapters ago, Menolly told him that she hasn't forgotten about her promise to give him an egg. Maybe Piemur thinks he needs it to show Sebell as proof? Does he think Sebell is going to behave like Dirzan did toward him about things? I can't find a credible justification for why Piemur takes the egg anywhere. Unless this is part of that "any apprentice" idea that says everyone is out to gain as much as they can without regard for other people.

_[The comments section suggested it was classism at work, and that Piemur was taking what was rightfully his while being scornful that too many people who didn't deserve fire lizards were getting them. They had textual quotes to back this up, but at the time, it didn't seem that convincing. Now that I've seen at least what Todd does when he writes people who aren't part of the nobility, the dragonriders, or the guilds, it's a much more likely explanation. This extra information doesn't actually mean anything good about this sequence, quite the opposite, but that it's more believable.]_

As it turns out, the answer is "the plot made him do it", as best as I can tell. After stealing the egg, Piemur finds a good place to dump it where he can keep it warm, insulated, and away from casually prying eyes, and then goes back to work assisting with the preparation of dinner. Having completed that, Piemur finally gets to eat scraps from the main table as his dinner. Now resolved to get out and report to Sebell, Piemur heads for the gate.

> He jauntily approached the main gate, whistling deliberately off-key.  
>  "And where do you think you're going?"  
>  "T'Gather," Piemur replied as if this was all too obvious.  
>  He was surprised by the man's guffaw as he was by being swung around and roughly propelled back the way he had come.  
>  "Don't try that one on me again, guttingman!" called the guard as the force of his push sent Piemur stumbling across the cobbles, trying not to fall and damage the egg. He stopped in the darkest shadow of the wall and stood fuming over this unexpected check to his escape. It was ridiculous! He couldn't think of any other Holds in all Pern where the drudges were denied the privilege of going to the Hold's own Gather.  
>  "G'wan back to the ashes, guttingman!"

As if we needed another reason to dislike Meron. This particular reason, though, serves double duty, as it keeps Piemur inside the Hold, with stolen goods. This doesn't bother Piemur that much - he just thinks he'll wait it out until there's some other Hold traffic that he can slip out with, so he finds an out-of-the-way spot by where the coal is collected and the ashes dumped and naps.

And wakes up to the alarm in full fury looking for him and the stolen egg. Which he brought completely on himself by stealing the egg. And we still don't know why he stole it. Realizing he needs a better place to hide, Piemur manages to climb the walls and slide through a window into a locked storeroom. The lock is tested by the searchers before they move on. Piemur still needs an even better hiding spot than this, and his cleverness provides an answer.

> He crawled cautiously over the stacked bundles until he found one with enough slack at the top to admit him. He opened the thing, and just as he was crawling in, wondered how under the sun he was going to tie it up again, the stitching in the side began to give in his hands. Smiling happily at such a solution, he rapidly undid the stitching down the side. Crawling out, he retied the knot about the mouth of the sack, then slid through the undone seam, which, once inside, he could do up slowly, but enough to pass a cursory inspection. It was hard to do, feeding the thick thread though the original holes from the inside, and his hands and fingers were cramped when he finally accomplished the feat.  
>  [...Finally safe...ish, Piemur falls into a deep sleep, then has a moment of panic trying not to suffocate in his bag...]  
>  It was then he realized he wasn't in Nabol Hold any longer. That the heat was not due to the unventilated stores room beyond Lord Meron's kitchen, but the sun pouring down from southern skies.

And thus, in one of the more clumsy ways possible, but fitting with the idea of a boy's adventure story, the narrative deposits Piemur where it wants him - on the Southern Continent, where he will get to have a survival adventure in a land he has no firsthand knowledge of. There's just the matter of food (he snags an orange fruit from a tree and eats - and it is apparently not poisonous), and of the people who are coming to collect the supplies.

> "If we don't get some of that stuff under cover, it'll be ruined," said a tenor voice.  
>  "I can smell the wine, in fact, and that better be taken out of the sun or it will be undrinkable," said a second male voice with urgency.  
>  "And if Meron's ignored my order for fabric **this** time..." The woman's sharp alto left the threat unspoken.  
>  "I made it a condition of that last shipment of fire lizard eggs, Mardra, so don't worry."  
>  "Oh, I won't worry, but Meron will."  
>  "Here, this one bears a weaver's seal."  
>  "At the very bottom, too. Who piled this so carelessly?"  
>  Piemur, scurrying down the other side as fast as he could, felt the shiver as someone began tugging at the sacks in the front. Then he was sliding and grabbed the egg more tightly, exclaiming as he hit the ground with a thud.  
>  Immediately three fire lizards, a bronze and two browns, appeared in the air about him.  
>  "I'm not here," he told them in a soundless whisper, gesturing urgently for them to go away. "You haven't seen me. I'm not here!" He took to his heels, his knees wobbling uncertainly, but add he lurched down a faintly outlined path leading away from the voices and the goods, he thought so fiercely of the Black nothingness of **between** that the fire lizards gave a shriek and disappeared.  
>  "Who's not here? What are you talking about?" The strident tones of the woman's voice followed Piemur as he careened away.

Good piece of writing to have the singer identify unknown voices by their singing ranges. I'm not very fond of Mardra continuing to be painted as evil, although it does make sense that she's able to casually threaten Meron. It would be interesting to see if Mardra were really in charge at Southern through some form of power that's not feminine in nature, since we've seen enough of that before.

Also, Piemur, your trick scares the fire lizards, but it doesn't make them forget you. Which means Mardra should know your picture, if not who you are, and be thumping the bushes and posting an overwatch to find you, in case you are a spy, saboteur, or you just know too much about what is going on with the Meron-Southern deals. (Not that anyone in this sequence is being particularly subtle about what's going on.) Since this is a boy's adventure story, of course, Piemur will be able to thrive in the new environment and evade any patrols that might be looking for him. He should also probably figure out what it is he's really saying when he projects _between_ at them.

Chapter Six closes with Piemur finding shade and shelter under a plant and falling deeply asleep from his exhausting day. I'm going to predict that once he wakes up, he's going to find he has no trouble at all adapting to his new environment. And that he might find a friend or two.


	7. Komm, süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Come, Sweet Death](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2hjkMmtv4) is what Meron is asking for here, and unfortunately for him, he won't get it.

Last chapter, Piemur was sent back out on assignment to Nabol Hold, and ended up being sent to the Southern Weyr in a supply run after a decision to steal a queen fire lizard egg from Meron, because there were too many peasants getting their lizards before Menolly fulfilled her promise to give one to him. 

**Dragondrums: Chapter 7: Content Notes: Torture**

Chapter 7 starts with Sebell going through progressively greater stages of worry as Piemur continues to fail to show up for dinner or dancing. Sebell eventually wonders if Piemur has left the Gather grounds and gotten himself into trouble and sends his fire lizard, Kimi, to look for Piemur on the Gather grounds or at the place Sebell had haggled for as quarters. Kimi returns with an anxious no. So Sebell goes back to where he met Piemur, and searches carefully with Kimi - still nothing.

> He sped back to the Hold, retied his borrowed mount, and reached the Gather just as news of the theft of the queen egg rippled through the crowds.  
>  [...Sebell has a sinking feeling...]  
>  By the time Sebell got to the Hold gates, no one was being allowed in or out. Glowbaskets shone on empty courtyards, and every window of the Hold was brilliant with light.  
>  [...Sebell is pretty sure he knows where Piemur is, but...]  
>  An order was circulated, and additional guards posted, to prevent anyone's leaving the Gather. Sebell positioned himself along the ramp parapet leading to the Hold, where Piemur could easily spot him in the light from the Hold's glows. Surely if the boy had only fallen asleep, the noise would rouse him.  
>  It was only when word filtered through the crowd that some unknown drudge had made off with the precious egg that Sebell came to the startling conclusion that the drudge could have been Piemur. How the boy had managed to enter the guarded Hold, Sebell couldn't figure out, but trust Piemur to find a way. Certainly it was like the boy to steal a fire lizard egg, given the opportunity. A queen egg at that! Piemur never did anything by halves.

As things go, Sebell warns off N'ton from staying in the valley using his fire lizard, Kimi, collects N'ton's lizard (Tris) in return, and witnesses the exchange of goods between Nabol Hold and the dragonriders from Southern (where Piemur is packed in for transport). His subsequent nap is interrupted by message drums beating for Oldive and Robinton to come to Nabol - Meron is in the last stages of life. Sebell sends Kimi to Menolly, asking her to come and bring him a change of clothing, and sends Tris back to N'ton, telling him not to come. Oldive, Robinton, and Menolly appear, and Sebell briefs them as he strips and changes clothes.

> "Is that why I've been summoned? To witness the punishment of a thieving apprentice?" Master Robinton was no longer amused.  
>  "I don't know, Master. Kimi located Piemur in the Hold, but she couldn't explain where, said she couldn't get to him because it was too dark. I know the guards spent hours searching the Hold. Presumably they know it better than Piemur could. But-" Sebell paused. "I'm bloody certain they would have made some sort of commotion if they had found him and recovered that egg."  
>  [...Oldive confirms for Sebell that Meron is dying...]  
>  "Did you find out who the Nabolese prefer as heir?" asked Master Robinton.  
>  "A grand-nephew, Deckter. A carter who runs a steady business between Nabol and Crom. He's got four sons that he keeps firmly in line. He's not a friendly man, but he's got the grudging respect of those who know him."

Standard grumble here for Sebell's "bloody" and the unquoted one that Menolly utters right after. Although the possibility of it being in relation to dragon's blood, as mentioned in a previous entry, could work out pretty well. Sebell finishes briefing the Harpers about the nature of the fire lizards (green eggs) and the clandestine dragon visit before meeting up with their escort from Nabol, who unintentionally confirm that Piemur was not captured while they fill in Master Oldive about Meron's condition. When Robinton requests a drum message to the local Lords and the Weyrleader, Sebell takes the opportunity to call for Piemur to report, if he's within earshot of the message drums. No response, even after taking a lunch to listen and wait for the summoned dignitaries to arrive.

Then comes the meeting with Meron.

> Although Sebell had seen Lord Meron the day before, he was appalled by the change in the man propped up in the bed: the eyes were sunken, pain had lined his face deeply, his skin was a pale yellow, and his fingers, plucking nervously at the fur rug that covered him, were claws with hanging bags of flesh between the knuckles. It was as if, Sebell thought, all life was centered in those hands, feebly holding onto life through the hair of the fur.  
>  "So, I'm granted my own private gather, is that it? Well, I've no welcome for any of you. Go away. I'm dying. That's what you all wished me to do these past Turns. Leave me to it."  
>  "You've not named your successor." said Lord Oterel bluntly.  
>  "I'll die before I do."  
>  "I think we must persuade you to change your mind on that count," said the Masterharper in a quiet, amiable tone.  
>  "How?" Lord Meron's snarl was smug in his self-assurance.  
>  "There is friendly persuasion..."  
>  "If you think I'll name a successor just to make things easy for you and those dregs at Benden, think again!" The force of that remark left the man gasping against the props, one hand feebly beckoning to Master Oldive, whose attention was on the Harper.  
>  "...Or unfriendly persuasion," continued Master Robinton as if Lord Meron hadn't spoken.  
>  "Ha! You can do nothing to a dying man, Master Robinton! You, Healer, my medicine!"  
>  Master Robinton lifted his arm, effectively barring Berdine [Nabol's healer] from approaching the sick man.  
>  "That's precisely it, my Lord Meron," said the Harper in an implacable voice, "we can do...nothing...to a dying man."

_[And that's one cocowhat.]_

Everyone clear what the plan is, here? Until Meron names a successor in the presence of all the witnesses, Robinton and the witnesses will deny Meron the medicine he gets to dull the pain, essentially hoping the pain will persuade Meron before it kills him. Which would blatantly and flagrantly fly in the face of any medical ethics or other philosophy that says "First, do no harm." I would wonder whether such things have developed on Pern, but the track record for decisions that require empathy is dismal at best, so I doubt that Master Oldive will protest these actions. Journeyman Berdine has more empathy for the sick man than anyone else in the room.

> Sebell heard Menolly's catch of breath as she understood what Master Robinton had in mind to force this issue with Lord Meron. Berdine started to protest, but was silenced by a growl from Lord Oterel. The healer turned appealingly to Master Oldive, whose eyes had never left the face of the Harper. Although Sebell had known how desperately Master Robinton wished for a peaceful succession in this Hold, he had not appreciated the steel in his pacific Master's will. Nabol Hold must not come into contention, not with every Holder's younger sons eager and willing to fight to the death to secure even as ill-managed a Hold as this. Such fighting could go on and on, until no more challengers presented themselves. What little prosperity Nabol enjoyed would have been wasted in the meantime with no one holding the lands properly.  
>  "What do you mean?" Meron's voice rose to a shriek. "Master Oldive, attend me. Now!"  
>  Master Oldive turned to the Lords Holder and bowed. "I understand, my Lords, that there are many seeking my aid at the Hold gates. I will, of course, return when my presence is required here. Berdine, accompany me!"  
>  When Lord Meron screamed for the two healers to halt, to attend him, Master Oldive took Berdine by the arm and firmly led him out, deaf to Meron's orders. As the door closed begins him, Meron ceased his entreaties and turned to the impassive faces that watched him.  
>  "You wouldn't? Can't you understand? I'm in pain. Agony! Something inside is burning through my vitals. It won't stop until its eaten me to a shell. I must have medicine. I must have it!"  
>  "We must have the name of your successor." Lord Oterel's voice was pitiless.  
>  [... The torture begins in earnest, with recitations of the possible successors...]  
>  "You must name your successor." said T'bor, High Reaches Weyrleader, and Meron's eyes rested on the man whose private grievance with him ran deepest. For it was Lord Meron's association with T'bor's Weyrwoman, Kylara, that had caused the death of both Kylara's queen dragon, Prideth, and Brekke's Wirenth.

That's interesting. I think it's the first time I've seen the narrative try to victim-blame someone other that Kylara for the incident. Perhaps because Kylara already had her narrative punishment exacted on her, the narrative is moving on to the "surviving" partner. And because the narrative still believes Kylara was slumming with Meron, T'bor also believes it and hates Meron for everything that happened. So the narrative has exacted horrible consequences on both members of that pairing.

> Sebell watched Meron's eyes widen with growing horror as he finally realized that he would have no surcease from the pain of his body until he did name a successor, confronted as he was by the men who had excellent reason for hating him.  
>  [...The litany begins again...]  
>  Sebell knew he would always remember this bizarre and macabre scene with horror as well as with a certain awful respect. He had long known that Master Robinton would use unexpected methods to maintain order throughout Pern and to uphold the leadership of Benden Weyr, but he had never expected such ruthlessness in the otherwise gentle and compassionate Robinton. He schooled his mind away from the stink and closeness of the room, from Meron's pain, by trying to appreciate the tactics that were being used as Lord Meron was deftly maneuvered into choosing the one man the others preferred among his heirs by their seeming to forget Deckter half the time. For a long while afterward, the flickering of glows would remind Sebell and Menolly of those eerie hours while Lord Meron tried to resist the will of his inflexible peers.  
>  It was inevitable that Meron would capitulate: Sebell thought he could almost feel the pulsing of pain through the man's body as he screamed out Deckter's name, thinking he had chosen to displease the men who had so tormented him.  
>  The instant he spoke Deckter's name, Master Oldive, who had gone no further than the next room, came to give the man relief.  
>  "Perhaps it was a terrible cruelty to inflict on anyone," Master Oldive told the Lords when they left Meron in a drugged stupor, "but the ordeal has also hastened his end. Which can only be a mercy. I don't think he can last another day."

_[And that's two cocowhats.]_

Repeatedly and without end.

The horror of the torture is enough to leave strong memories, but Sebell respects it as utilitarian. But Sebell is wrong about gentle and compassionate Robinton. He's already seen how wrong he is, with how Menolly was treated when she got here, how Piemur was almost killed when he was sent to the drumheights - hell, that he got sent there in the first place for puberty. That Robinton continues to employ abusers, misogynists, and others that create a hostile environment for the apprentices. This should not be unexpected to you, Sebell. Or, rather, the only thing that should be unexpected is that Robinton was willing to go that far as to deny a dying man comfort to get his way. Sebell, disillusionment would be a good response here.

Also, Oldive, perhaps? _Perhaps?_ **_PERHAPS, you asshole?_** What the fuck would remove the qualifier for you? You were just complicit in the torture of a dying man. Now, you can "ends justify the means" it all you like so that everyone can sleep tonight thinking they did what was good and just, but the fact is that the Healer did great harm and should have to account for it, just like everyone else in the room there. Of course, since the only people in the room were the conspirators, and Meron didn't have enough strength to really make enough noise to alert his own allies (who were being barred from the room) to what was going on, nobody will charge or accuse the conspirators with torture. This is shameful behavior.

Sebell is on his way to rationalization of the whole affair, which leaves Menolly as the only person witnessing what happened that might have conscience issues. Since she's the only one who has suffered torture, pain, and abuse in that group, aside from her gasp of realization, the narrative carefully ignores what she might be thinking or feeling about all of it while the torture goes on, and hurries us into the next plot points before Sebell can ask. Assuming that Sebell _would_ ask, which appears highly unlikely.

To close out the chapter, Sebell announces the choice of Deckter to the assembled audience waiting outside in the Hold courtyard, and takes the opportunity to try and figure out how Piemur evaded detection.

> His glance traveled upward and paused on the small window. "Menolly!" He grabbed her by the hand and started pulling her toward the kitchen yard. "Kimi said it was dark. I wonder what's..." In his excitement, he reversed back to the guard, hauling the complaining Menolly with him.

Because, as we've already noted, the bodily autonomy of women is always subject to the needs of whatever man is around, whether dragonrider, Holder, or Harper. Sebell, why are you dragging Menolly around? You, of all people, should understand how to use your words.

> "See that little window above the ashpit?" he asked the guard excitedly. "What does it open on? The kitchen?"  
>  "That one? Naught but a stores room." And then the guard clamped his teeth shut, looking apprehensively back to the Hold as if he had been indiscreet and feared reprisal.  
>  His reaction told Sebell exactly what he needed to know.  
>  "The supplies for Southern Weyr were stored in that room, weren't they?"  
>  The guard stared straight ahead of him, lips pressed firmly together, but the flush in his face was a giveaway. Laughing with relief, Sebell half-ran toward the kitchen yard, Menolly eagerly following him.  
>  "You think Piemur hid himself among the stuff for the Oldtimers?" Menolly asked.  
>  "It's the only answer that suits the circumstances, Menolly," said Sebell. He halted right in front of the ashpit and pointed to a wall that separated the two pits. "That wouldn't be too high a jump for an agile lad, would it?"  
>  "No, I wouldn't think so. And just like Piemur! But, Sebell, that would mean he's in the Southern Weyr!"

And the actual plot of the chapter closes with Sebell and Menolly planning to ask friends and send fire lizards to find Piemur on Southern.

Sebell, however, is a terrible poker player. In some other novel, without time-traveling dragons, Sebell tipping his hand about knowing would have the guard go back to his commanders, inform them that the Harpers, and thus Benden, had proof that they were dealing with Southern, and that they should probably scrub any further evidence of the affair. Such that when Benden arrived to confront Meron about his involvement, all they would find were the smoking remains of Nabol Hold, where Meron tragically perished after naming his successor. All Sebell really needed to know was where the window led to - the rest would be deducible from there, knowing what he knows at that point.

Then again, as it has been pointed out, the only authority we have that Meron had been doing something wrong is the narrative, the proclamation of Benden, and the active Harper propaganda in favor of that proclamation. There's no real moral component or justification that accompanies any of this - just that Benden says so and the Harpers work to keep opinion in favor of Benden. The libertarian Galt-world that is Pern seems to find this arrangement just fine and doesn't provide any more justification as to why people obey Benden and consider trade with the South wrong, but it isn't really clear or given justification to my satisfaction. And based on the comments on the last two entries, it hasn't been to your satisfaction, either.

This chapter has been awful. Tune in next time, where we find Piemur has found a civilization of Lost Boys searching for a mother figure...


	8. The Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Rain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYsY4wYMQe8), or its [2015 remaster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzJOCPXqlvw).
> 
> Because there's a deadly rain to dodge in this chapter.

Last chapter, Sebell and the Harpers deduced how Piemur escaped the pursuit after stealing a queen egg...after they participated in the torture of the dying Lord Meron until he named a successor.

**Dragondrums: Chapter 8: Content Notes: None, surprisingly.**

The action returns to Piemur for Chapter 8, who is still adapting to the Southern Continent. Food, water, and heat for the egg are the first order of business, as is getting farther away from Southern Weyr and Hold.

> Afterward, he never could figure out why he felt the Weyr and Southern Hold were dangerous to him. He just felt he ought to avoid contact with them, certainly until his egg had hatched and he had Impressed his own fire lizard. It wasn't logical, really, but he'd endured a harrowing experience, had already been in the time of the hunted, and so he continued to run.

Wait, so we have a golden opportunity to show off the vaunted intellect and ability of Piemur to piece together fragments of information, and we're going to lay this at the foot of instinct?

Even though, according to Piemur's timeline, he just recently heard Mardra deliver threats if Meron screwed up her order, and just before that, he escaped from Nabol with a stolen fire lizard egg? Surely he put two and three together and figured that the allied Hold and Weyr might exchange information, and that would put dragonriders on his tail, which would obviously be bad. Considering Piemur's memetic Trickster God status from the past two books, and how well he put everything together earlier in the book, for this to be "running on instinct" and to not even understand why later seems like a wasted opportunity to do some showing instead of telling.

The next day, Piemur realizes that an only-fruit diet is not sustainable, and recalls Menolly's fishing exploits from her time outside a Hold, fashions himself a line, and manages to land a fish. Then realizes where the tide line will be and dashes to move the egg away from the incoming water. Which points out that he's been sunburned quite heavily, as the salt water exacerbates all of those lovely injuries and burns. An inland trip produces giant tubers, with grubs running off them, so he's set for variety of diet now.

> That evening, he began to wonder why he had continued moving away from hold and Weyr. Of course, it was kind of fun, discovering each new cove and the vast stretches of sandy beach and rocky strand. To be accountable to no one except himself was also a new experience. Now that he had enough to eat and some variety of food, he was enjoying his adventure very much indeed. Why, he'd wager anything he'd set foot in places no other person had trod. It was exhilarating to be first at something, instead of following others and doing just what every other apprentice had done before him Turn after Turn after Turn.

Here's the purest "boy's adventure story" that we have, the general exhilaration of boy versus nature, no adults, no rules, nothing for danger but what the natural world can throw at you - which, on Pern, also includes otherworldly flesh-devouring spores that rain from the sky in regular intervals.

> He had seen neither fire lizards nor dragons in the sky for the past two days, so afterward he thought that might be why he had given no thought to Thread. In hindsight he realized that he had known perfectly well that Thread fell on the southern half of Pern just add it did in the North. His preoccupation with the fire lizard egg and his efforts to supply himself with food had simply divorced him from the concerns and memories of life in craft and hall.  
>  [...Threadfall! Piemur dives into the nearest deep body of water and tries to keep himself submerged by ducking under the water as much as possible and only surfacing as needed...]  
>  He was dizzy with lack of oxygen, pinpointed by Threadscore that burned and stung in the salty water. Menolly had at least had a cave in which to shelter and...  
>  If he could find it, if it were sufficiently above the surface of the lagoon at this time of the tide, there was an overhanging rock....He desperately tried to place its location on the lagoon arm the next time he surfaced, but he could barely see with eyes red and stinging. He was never sure in the mist of panic and anoxia how he found that meager shelter. But he did.

Enough references to Menolly and I finally figured out something important about this story.

Dragondrums is Dragonsong and Dragonsinger in reverse. Menolly starts at a Sea Hold out in the middle of nowhere, ends up holdless to escape the abuse, finds food and shelter and survives Threadfall, gathers fire lizards, then ends up at the Harper Hall, where she has to deal with bullies before she can get what she wants. Piemur starts with everything he wants, then had to deal with bullies, ends up outside his Hall with a fire lizard egg, and survives Threadfall while finding food and shelter. On a coastline, as well. The only thing he's missing is abuse when he comes back to a Hold or the Hall. I'll spot him all the abuse from Shonagar and others that have already happened, so that the narrative doesn't have to make it a complete reversal.

This reversal continues all the way to having to rethink oneself after being outside a Hold, as Menolly did.

> He, Piemur of...well, he wasn't a herdsman's boy anymore, and he wasn't a harper's apprentice either...Piemur...Piemur of Pern. He, Piemur of Pern, he went on more confidently, had survived Threadfall holdless. He straightened his shoulders and smiled broadly as he glanced proudly across his lagoon. Piemur of Pern had survived Threadfall! He had overcome considerable obstacles to secure a queen fire lizard egg. It would hatch, and he would, at long last, have a fire lizard all his own! He glanced fondly at the mound in the sand that was **his** little queen.

And Piemur has apparently been jealous about getting an egg for this long. Actually, a thought comes to mind. If fire lizards are the cousins of dragons, and the dragons know which of the candidates they want before (or soon after) they hatch, then maybe we can chalk up all this Gollum-like behavior to the dragon inside the egg influencing Piemur into his actions. Menolly would know, I guess, were she here.

Instead, the dragon egg hatches, and Piemur not only has to feed his new queen, he has to keep her safe from a pack of wherries that want to feast. So Piemur goes on a dash to protect his fire lizard from wherries. Sound familiar? The wherries are driven off by dragons, eventually, and Piemur and the fire lizard stay under the cover of the trees.

The narrative then shifts away from Piemur to those looking for him. We learn that Meron held out for eight days after the torture before dying. And that everyone else, save Menolly, is pretty well assured that Piemur will be just fine in Southern and will not show himself until the fire lizard egg is hatched. Menolly is on board with Piemur not appearing, but as the designated female and keeper of empathy, she's the only one who worries about him.

> "Menolly," said the Harper soothingly, "you're not responsible for-"  
>  "But I feel responsible for Piemur," she said, and then shot her Master an apologetic look for interrupting him so rudely. "If I hadn't encouraged his interest in the fire lizards, if I hadn't filled his ears with the pleasures they bring, he might not have been tempted to steal the egg and get himself into such a predicament." She looked up because both men started to laugh, and she exclaimed with exasperation at their callousness.  
>  "Menolly, Piemur has been getting in and out of trouble since long before you arrived here," said Sebell. "You and your fire lizards calmed him down considerably. But I think you're right about Piemur not showing himself until Impression's been made. And Toric is on the alert for him. He'll show up."

But rather than tell stories about Piemur's exploits so that she understands, the chapter finishes with Sebell off to help Deckter get installed. Piemur's status as a memetic Trickster God stays intact without anyone having to give any details about how he got that way. At this point, I don't think even the author really knows.

So, that means it's wild speculation theater time! What's the reason you think everyone fears Piemur as a prankster?

_[Additionally, I have to laugh now at the mention of Toric this early on, given what kind of a nasty piece of work Toric will turn out to be in The White Dragon (and several others, too). I wonder if the author knew this trajectory was coming, but since The White Dragon and Dragondrums are published relatively close to each other, it's not out of the ordinary for Toric to be a known quantity before he's more fully fleshed out into a reason why Piemur would want to stay very far away from Southern Hold as well as Southern Weyr.]_


	9. The Pines of Rome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Pines of Rome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y1n2Apn27k), which is a good piece to have for your wilderness survival part of the tale.

Last chapter, as promised, Piemur landed into life on Southern with a thud, hatched his fire lizard egg, and decided he was content, right where he was.

**Dragondrums, Chapter 9: Content Notes:**

Chapter Nine continues this idea of Piemur running on instinct, in contradiction to the character that had been established in the previous book and here until he stole the fire lizard egg.

> Afterward, Piemur wasn't certain why he had run from the dragonriders. He seemed to have been running from or to something ever since his voice had changed. In his panic, he supposed he aligned the Oldtime dragonriders with Lord Meron, and he did not want to encounter anyone connected with Lord Meron just then.

That's not instinct, that's _logic._ Piemur already knew by that point that Meron was supplying Southern Weyr in defiance of Benden, and then he heard Mardra threaten Meron. That sounds like a perfectly good pair of reasons to run away very fast, not to mention the stolen fire lizard egg Piemur had. Stop robbing Piemur of opportunities to demonstrate what he's allegedly famous for.

Breakfast is an unexpected half-consumed-by-Thread runner beast corpse for Farli (Piemur's queen) to eat raw and Piemur to cut strips from for cooking later. As they explore, Piemur finds the perfect inland camp point, with vegetables behind him, herdbeasts in front, and fresh water a-plenty.

> Squinting against the sunlight, Piemur could see herdbeasts grazing on the lush grass on both sides of the river. And yet, there'd been Thread here the day before, and no dragonriders flaming to prevent the deadly stuff burrowing into the ground and eating the land barren.  
>  As if to reassure himself, he poked at the soil with one of the sticks he'd collected, lifting up a clod of grass. Grubs fell from the roots, and Piemur was suitably awed by the abilities of those little gray wrigglies, which could, all by themselves, keep stuck an enormous plain free from the ravages of Thread. And those bloody Oldtimers hadn't so much as stirred from the Weyr during yesterday's Fall. They weren't proper dragonriders at all. F'lar and Lessa had been right to exile them here to the South, where the insignificant grubs did their work for them. Why, he could have been killed during that Threadfall, and not a dragonrider around to protect him. Not, Piemur honestly admitted, that he hadn't been well able to protect himself.

Freeze it there, please.

First, when did Piemur learn/deduce that grubs were the reason that Southern recovered easily from Thread? From what I remember, that was supposed to be a closely-guarded secret with need-to-know clearances applied, such that Benden and the Masters of the Crafthalls friendly to Benden are the ones to know, and everyone else left in the dark. Could this be yet another of the Noodle Incidents perpetually referenced but never explained? An authorial slip, perhaps, because the _audience_ learned about the grubs back in Dragonquest? In any case, there's no forthcoming explanation as to why Piemur knows this secret knowledge.

Second, um, Piemur, if I'm a dragonrider, and I know that I'm sitting on a continent where the grubs will keep the vegetation alive, and nature is smart enough to keep most of the fauna out of harm's way, why would I risk injury to myself and my dragon flying flaming passes over deserted areas where there are no confirmed people? You've been trying to hide yourself from them for this long, so they really have no reason to be there. Unless you believe that Tradition (TRADITION!) dictates that dragonriders fly and flame all the areas where Thread could fall on land, regardless of whether there are things there or backup systems in place. That sounds like what "proper" means here. But again, exiled, so therefore they're already outside the definition of "proper".

Anyway, Piemur's plan at this point is to wait in the valley, let Farli and himself feast from its riches until she's outgrown her beginning-of-life appetite, and eventually make his way to Southern Hold. While he gathers fire material, he takes a closer look at some of the vegetation and realizes that he's in a field of numbweed plants, which provides needed relief to his still sunburned skin. The Plan, however, finds itself getting easily derailed.

> As he settled by the fire to wait for his meat to cook, he knew he'd be sorry to leave here.  
>  He said that to himself the next morning when he rose, and that evening when he curled himself up in the shelter he'd made for Farli and himself. He really ought to try and get word back to the Harper Hall.  
>  Each day, however, found him too busy catering to the needs of a rapidly growing fire lizard to make provisions for a journey of possibly several days. He spent a whole day trying to catch a fish for the oils need to soothe Farli's flaking skin.  
>  [...Thread falls again, but this time, Piemur is ready for it...]  
>  He had made preparations against the next Fall of Thread, determined never to spend another eternity under a rock ledge. He had found a sunken tree trunk where the river flowed out of the forest. Diving into the water, he kicked down to the depth at which drowning Thread could no longer sting. There he hooked his arm around the tree trunk and poked back to the surface a thick reed, through which he then was able to breathe.

Since it doesn't say what the diameter of the reed was, and since Piemur isn't dying of poisoning while he does this, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that his snorkel is sufficiently wide to permit proper exchange of gases. And a second benefit that the snorkel is curled at the top in some way so that the sheets of Thread falling above the surface of the water don't drop into his breathing apparatus and destroy him internally. And a third benefit that Thread doesn't viciously chew through the reeds like it does any other organic matter so that his snorkel can be above water without being shorn off…

…okay, that's a lot of doubt. The way the scene is written, I'm not sure Piemur can survive. Maybe there's a missing detail, like that his snorkel is protected by the tree trunk, and so the Thread falling onto the trunk either doesn't penetrate or gets a grub swarm as soon as it touches down. Despite the missing details, Piemur is able to wait out the Threadfall. Once it finally passes, he notices that much of the local wildlife has been doing the same thing he has in trying to get away from the Thread. Which makes me wonder why life on Pern hasn't evolved some adaptation to combat Thread, like armor, or the ability to anticipate the Thread so as to be able to get under cover, or gills. So that something like this doesn't happen:

> He saw the bulge of the fallen runner beast, half-hidden under a large numbweed bush. To his surprise, it heaved upward, its bloodied flank crawling with grubs. The poor thing couldn't still be alive? He raised his stick to put an end to the creature's pain when he realized that the movement came from under the animal, spasmodic and desperate. Farli hoped from his shoulder and chittered, touching a tiny protruding hoof that Piemur hadn't noticed.  
>  It had been a female runner beast! With an exclamation, Piemur grabbed the hind legs and pulled the corpse from the youngster the female had given her life to protect from Thread. Bleating, it staggered to its feet, shedding a carpet of grubs, and hobbled the few steps to Piemur, its head and shoulders scored here and there by Thread.  
>  Almost absently, Piemur stroked the furry head and scratched behind the ear cup, feeling its rough tongue licking his skin. Then he saw the long shallow scrape on the little beast's right leg.  
>  "So that's why you didn't make it to the river, huh, you poor stupid thing?" said Piemur, gathering it closer to him. "And your dam sheltered you with her body. Brave thing to do." It bleated again, looking anxiously up at him.

So Piemur gives the beast a name - Stupid - and takes care of him, using everything he knows from his pre-Harper life, which is another advancement along the path of running Menolly's story in reverse.

The narrative spins away from Piemur back to the Harper Hall, where Sebell and Menolly meet with the newly-returned Robinton from Nabol Hold. Robinton is quite pleased with himself, even though he has no news of Piemur.

> "I have arranged matters so that we don't have to worry about Nabol Hold supplying the Oldtimers with northern goods or receiving a further embarrassing of riches of fire lizard eggs in that otherwise impoverished Hold."  
>  "Then, none of the disappointed heirs caused trouble during the confirmation?" asked Sebell.  
>  Master Robinton waggled his fingers, a sly smile on his face. "Not to speak of, though Hittet is a master of the snide remark. They could scarcely contend the nomination, since it had been made before such notable witnesses. Besides, I never bothered to disabuse them of the notion that Benden and the other Lord Holders would call the heir to account for the sins of his predecessor." Master Robinton beamed at the reactions of his journeyman to his strategy. "It afforded me considerable pleasure to help the new Lord Deckter to send the worthless lot back to improve their beggared holds."  
>  [...Robinton gave some advice that running a Hold is like running a successful business...]  
>  "We won't locate Piemur by whistling for him from the north. You two go south. Make certain that Toric lets the Oldtimers know, if you can't carry the message discreetly to them yourselves, that Meron is dead and that his successor supports Benden Weyr. I believe that Master Oldive wants you to bring back some of those herbs and powders. He used up a large portion of his supplies on Meron."  
>  "But don't you dare return until you've found Piemur."

So the narrative has no trouble at all showing us why Robinton is the best ally the Benden Weyrleader will ever have, but it won't bother with why Piemur is so universally known. Still, it's a solution that would make Spock proud - no lies, merely omissions, and everybody filled in the details the way that worked to the Harper's benefit. Plus, an excuse to send Menolly and Sebell southward to collect the wayward apprentice, even though at this point, there's no useful intelligence that he can deliver. (Which might be another part of his reluctance to return to the Hall, in addition to the part where he feels out of place there and almost was killed there by apprentices _who are still there_.)

Only a little while to go before everything wraps up. But first, everyone has to actually get to their appointed places.


	10. A Guy Like You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A Guy Like You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRruGD5XLGw), who we play up the good qualities of and never let the bad ones through.

Last chapter, Piemur survived another round of deadly Thread, likely bending a few laws of nature to do so, collected a pet runnerbeast and a queen dragon, and had serious doubts about returning to the world he left in a sack. Meanwhile, the rescue effort finally got authorized by Robinton with an appropriate cover story.

**Dragondrums: Chapter 10: Content Notes: None, again**

Chapter Ten stays with Piemur, Farli, and Stupid for the entire time, so no cuts to elsewhere. The action starts with the arrival of red-sailed ships landing on his part of the land.

> As Piemur continued to watch the disembarkation, he became aware of a growing sense of indignation that anyone would dare invade his privacy, would have the audacity to make a camp and set up cooking fires with great kettles balanced on spits across the flames, just as if they belonged here. This was his river, and Stupid's grazing grounds. His! Not theirs to litter with tent, kettle, and fire!

If this is Piemur trying to do an impression of Yertle the Turtle, I'd say he passes. But Piemur is not king of all he sees, and even if he were, there's one thing that he keeps forgetting in all of this - _he hasn't actually revealed his presence to anyone yet_. So nobody knows that he's staked a claim on the land.

Nor will anyone, because Piemur decides to move inland and erase the traces of his existence rather than go say hi to the work crew, who are here to harvest numbweed. Because Piemur hates the smell of cooking numbweed (as does everyone else, apparently, that isn't forced into having to make the salve) enough to abandon the shelter he currently has set up. Piemur, as he moves inland, while Farli is scolding at something, starts to construct a story so he could impress the work party, strolling in like he owns the place, and spinning a yarn full of almost-truths with a few key omissions...

> "Hello! What are you doing sneaking around here?"

Busted.

> A tall girl stepped into his path, blocking his way. On one shoulder was a bronze fire lizard, on the other a brown, both eyeing Farli intently. She let out an apologetic _squeak_ , as startled as Piemur. As she also dug her talons into his shoulder and tightened her tail about his neck, all that came out of his mouth was a choked cry of astonishment. A quick chirp from the bronze caused Farli to relax her tail. Piemur turned his head toward her, annoyed that she hadn't warned him.  
>  "It's not her fault," said the girl with a wide smile, easing her weight to one leg as she enjoyed Piemur's discomfiture. She had a pack strapped to her shoulders, a belt with a variety of pouches, some empty; dark hair wrapped with a band tightly about her head so strands wouldn't tangle in branches; and thick-soled sandals on her feet as well as shin guards tied around her lower legs.

I'm trying to picture this and figure it how it will work in relation to collecting plant material and/or wielding harvesting weaponry. If the plants are thorny, it doesn't seem to make sense to cover the shins, but leave the tops of the feet open and reinforce the soles. If the trees tangle hair, wouldn't something like a braid, possibly with weight on the end, be more useful for keeping hair out of the trees? And what happens if this new girl has to climb or crawl? Should we be assuming she's wearing sturdy full-leg and full-arm coverings, which would make it very hot for her? If not, how does she avoid injury? (Later, we find she has a wherhide jacket for protection.)

> "Meer," and she indicated the bronze, "and Talla know how to be silent when they wish. And when they realized that she was already Impressed, we all we wanted to see who had got a gold. I'm Sharra from the Southern Hold." She held out her hand, palm up. "How's you get down here? We didn't see any wreckage as we came along the coast."  
>  [...Piemur explains in the Robinton way, letting Sharra think he's been wrecked...]  
>  "That's all past history for you, lad," said Sharra, her deep, musical voice compassionate. "If you survived the southern seas, and three Threadfalls holdless, I'd say you belong in the south."  
>  "I belong here?" Suddenly, the prospect heartened Piemur. Sharra was as perceptive as the Harper. The thought of being permitted to stay on in this beautiful land, walking where no one else, maybe not even Sharra, had ever trod before, made Piemur's heart tip over.  
>  "Yes, I'd say you belonged," said Sharra, wide mouth curled in a smile. "So, what name shall I call you by?"  
>  If she hadn't given him the opportunity to state a name, any name, not necessarily his own, Piemur might have prevaricated. Instead, he answered her with a grin. "I'm Piemur of Pern."

I'm wondering if there isn't something else making Piemur's heart tip over, considering puberty and such, but for now, we'll take Piemur at this word that it's exploration and having a place to call his own that warms his heart.

Piemur introduces the rest of the cast to Sharra, and finds out that she makes very sure to be well away from the numbweed factory, collecting other herbs, because she hates the smell, too. Piemur offers to help her, which she accepts, and then proceeds to shamelessly use him to retrieve difficult-to-collect herbs from trees, thorny bushes, and tight spaces over the next few days.

> She was quite ready and prepared to daub him with numbweed whenever necessary, but she did have to point out that his size made him the logical person to pursue the shyest herbs in their protective environment. Nothing would permit Piemur to lose honor in Sharra's eyes.

For his scratches, Piemur learns a great deal about the medicinal properties of the herbs he's collecting, as well as quite a bit about the surrounding area, while he admitted to having been a herdsman's son. He also learns about a better plant to use for bedding while he shares the light blanket Sharra has with her.

In other types of stories, this would be something to be negotiated, because Sharra and Piemur would both be acutely aware of their differing genders and not want to give off an impression of invitation or imposition unless they could be sure the other was receptive. Since we're still in the boy's adventure story, though, possibly handwaved by Pern customs outside of Weyrs, there's no direct mention as to whether either of this pairing finds the other attractive, as there's still adventure to be had. Maybe if and when Piemur gets back to Southern Hold, there will be some commentary to the matter. Maybe not, though - Menolly didn't have any crushes she was leaving behind to go out from Half-Circle, after all.

One night's hunting from the fire-lizards yields an interesting piece of information about the world they both live on. Having dispatched a whersport, something entirely new to Piemur, that the fire lizards brought, Sharra explains a bit more about the local wildlife:

> "There're a lot of strange beasties in this part of the south. As if all the animals you have in the north got mixed up somehow. A whersport isn't a fire lizard, and it isn't a wher. For one thing it's a daytime beast, and whers are nocturnal; sun blinds them. Then there's far more varieties of snake here than in the north. Or so I'm told....

Hrm, crossed strands in an ancient room, a disturbing connection between fire lizards and dragons, and apparent "mixing-up" of the animals on the north. And grubs. Seems like the ancients had access to some very high-level scientific procedures.

Chapter 10 closes with the cooking of dinner from the whersport and some plants and tubers.

_[Early speculation turns out to be something interesting when you go looking back on it later. Mostly because while I was right that people would be interested in Sharra, I had the wrong people, ultimately, that would end up with her._

__

__

_Also, I know a little bit more about why someone might call it a whersport, but also about the history of the usage of "sport" to mean genetic deviations or mutations, and why it isn't used all that much any more because of the way it was used be eugenicists and others with particular agendas about genetic purity. This is definitely one of those things to keep in mind with relation to time periods, because the word "sport" is used fairly frequently in A Wrinkle In Time. Although it's used by Charles Wallace, and he seems to be quite aware of the pejorative meaning attached, as well. It's just another case of how science fiction writing is a lot more about the time period in which it was written than about the time period it's nominally been set in.]_


	11. Rhapsody In Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rhapsody in Blue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH2PH0auTUU). Which is extra-special when you remember that the Harpers are all officially clad in their won shade of blue.
> 
> And who doesn't like a little Gershwin with their commentary?

Last chapter, Piemur found his southern paradise invaded by herb-gatherers, and in his attempts to get away, comes across a girl with the same adventurous spirit and distaste for cooking numbweed. Could it be the first signs of love blossoming as they collect herbs from the countryside?

**Dragondrums: Chapter 11: Content Notes: Dragon-influenced sex**

...we'll have to wait for another book to find out about that, as this chapter sticks firmly with Menolly and Sebell. The action, or rather, lack thereof, has Menolly and Sebell in a calm out on the seas as they sail toward Southern Hold, and Sebell is quite irritable at this point. After a couple snaps that are uncharacteristic for him, Menolly deduces the cause.

> Suddenly, she glanced skyward, where the fire lizards were aerially following the skiff in swoops and glides. She watched them for a long moment, frowning slightly as she saw one dive into the waves. Sebell, puzzled by her abrupt curiosity, identified the fisher as his own Kimi and smiled indulgently as she brought the neatly captured yellowtail back to the prow of the ship. Sebell wondered why the other three fire lizards didn't come to share the feast, but the thought didn't absorb him long. The ferocity with which Kimi ate fascinated him; he felt as if he were somehow involved in tearing the strips, as if he could savor the warm salty flesh in his mouth, as if-  
>  "I'm sending Beauty to Toric at Southern Hold. She can't stay here now, Sebell."

This is good characterization, although I'm pretty sure Menolly didn't have to deal with this particular problem on-camera at any point in the previous books, so we would have to assume her familiarity is from previous times that such things have happened. Considering Menolly has nine, and at least once of each color, I'm guessing she has been able to settle such issues internally, if needed. Unless the fire lizards have an innate sense of avoiding their own clutch mates. Then, I'm guessing someone has to go off and find a wild one or someone else's fire lizard to satisfy those urges. Which, now that I think about it, has to have some consequences somewhere. Why haven't we seen any of this, especially in Nabol where all the fire lizards are?

Sebell eventually understands what's going on.

> Kimi was about to fly. And it was Menolly's bronzes who would fly her. A surge of elation swept Sebell, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. And yet...  
>  "Menolly?" He turned to her, hands outstretched, palms up, pleading with her and apologizing for what he knew was about to happen since there were only the two of them on this becalmed boat in the middle of the windstill sea. He hadn't wanted Menolly coerced, as she now must be; he'd wanted to be in full command of himself, not overridden by the mating instinct of Kimi.  
>  "It's all right, Sebell. It's all right."  
>  Smiling, Menolly put her hands in his and let herself be drawn into his arms where he had so yearned to have her.

And there is a mating flight, and there are two humans mating on the boat while their fire lizards do.

There's good things about this: I think this is the closest we have gotten to two adults, aware of what is about to happen, giving express consent for sex while their fire lizards/dragons mate, for example. Sebell needs to articulate more, but if this is his first time experiencing the mating instinct, the confusion makes sense. And it is much easier to read Menolly as consenting with what she says to Sebell than any attempt to this point for any other person affected by this urge.

Sebell's attraction to Menolly outside of Kimi's urges appears out of left field for me, but they've been together and done enough things that I'm willing to give the narrative the benefit of the doubt on this. _[The comments reminded me that earlier on in the book, Sebell had put his arm around Menolly and Piemur, and Piemur being included mostly seemed to be so that Sebell could put one around Menolly.]_ Sebell's desire to have done this uncoerced is refreshing, compared the dragonriders, who are significantly more "whatevs" when it comes to what mating instinct does to them.

There is one seriously bad thing going on, here, though, and I guess it's meta at this point in the narrative - in whatever process was used to breed dragons out of fire-lizards, wouldn't someone have figured out that the strong emphatic bonds the fire lizards formed would be inconvenient around mating time and tried to breed traits in the fire lizards that encouraged not sharing that time, or not so strongly? Or some form of training, perhaps? So that we don't have situations where people are having sex without having consciously consented to it while not under the influence? After all this time, nobody has come up with a solution to this problem?

It could be as simple as giving the humans a dose of an anti-aphrodisiac, should they exist. Maybe fellis. Someone, whether a queen rider or a green rider, has to have at least tried to figure out some way of suppressing the urge for them, if not for their dragon.

The fact that the fire lizards also have this power makes Benden and others that are giving them away as pets and gifts seem a lot shadier. "Here, have this cute thing that will drag you into an uncontrollable urge to have sex with someone every so often, whether you want to or not." Which was the problem with dragons, but dragons are controlled in supply. There's nothing stopping someone else from doing as Meron did and saturating the area around them with fire lizards and the associated problems that come with it. Then again, the Weyr culture we've seen probably thinks that's a good outcome, as it gives them more potential people to rape and claim it was their fire lizard.

The ancients don't seem to have thought this idea through very well, and their descendants are following firmly in those footsteps.

A couple of extra revelations come from this unexpected mating:

> "It wasn't just Kimi's need," he said in a hurried voice, "you know that, don't you?"  
>  "Of course I know, dear Sebell." Her fingers lingered on his cheek, his lips. "But you always stand back and defer to our Master." She did not hide from Sebell then how much she loved Master Robinton, nor would that ever come between then since they each loved the man in their separate ways. "...but I have so wished-"  
>  [...a swinging boom interrupts the tender moment, as the wind has returned...]  
>  "Where did Rocky go?" [Sebell] asked Menolly, who frowned slightly in thought.  
>  "He either joined Beauty...or found himself a wild green. I suspect the latter."  
>  "Wouldn't you know?" asked Sebell, surprised.  
>  Menolly shook her head from side to side, with a half-smile, and Sebell realized she'd been unaware of anything except their rapport with their two fire lizards. He relaxed, thoroughly content with their new understanding.

Uh, Sebell, that's the worst way of asking "now that it's over, do you still consent to what happened?" Because confessing your pantsfeels to the woman who gave an ambiguous consent signal at best could backfire spectacularly. As in "I hope you can swim to Southern, you asshole. Taking advantage of me like that." You're lucky Menolly returns your affections. Even though she's apparently carrying a torch for Robinton. And, if you squint just right, it's possible that Sebell loves him the same way, but would also never confess such a thing. Not that the narrative really allows for the possibility - it tried pretty hard to make Kylara into something unsympathetic, instead of letting her be kinky and feminist-y, so it's unlikely to allow for the possibility that Sebell could be bi. Which is a tragedy, because fantasy pastiches really can stand to be more inclusive, instead of less.

Second, how did Menolly ever manage to get anything done at the Harper Hall, having nine fire lizards, if one of them being in the mating throes is enough to completely take up her attention? Admittedly, Dragonsinger only took seven days, but there's been plenty of time before that and afterward, between Dragonsinger and Dragondrums, for this sort of thing to have already happened. I had been handwaving it before this point as "fire lizards don't have as strong a bond, so people can handle their urges more easily", but that is apparently not the case. Also, for everyone who received a fire lizard or two from the Weyrs or Meron, we're sorry, you're going to have the same problems the dragonriders do, but without the implicit ability to get away with it because dragon. I wonder how many regional conflicts will start because of fire lizards boinking. We've had three turns of the planet so far, so there should have been more than enough opportunities for these kinds of things to have happened and to have stories of the conflicts that resulted.

Finally, I feel markedly more uncomfortable about Weyr culture in relation to what Menolly just said about Rocky. I didn't think that was possible, but it is. Since the fire lizards seem to be able to do what the dragons do, and at the same strength, what happens with all the other bronze dragons that don't get to mate with the queen? Do they all go off and find greens, leaving their riders to find whomever is nearest to assault in dragon-sex-feels? Are there enough greens in the mating mood to manage that? Do dragon or rider actually care whether their partner wants to mate? (No.) Bleurgh.

Fire lizards now seem like some sort of gambit by the Weyrs to make all the rest of Pern behave and think like them.

The plot advances with the ship landing at Southern and Toric greeting them. The message is faithfully delivered to Toric about the new Lord Deckter and his lack of willingness to deal with the Southern Weyr. Toric mentions that Mardra was inflamed about a half-empty sack, which piques the curiosity of the Harpers, and they explain what Piemur did, and how that action set in motion the Rube Goldberg machine that led to the current situation at Nabol. Which could cause headaches once Southern needs another supplier, and Toric doesn't want to jeopardize his relationship with Benden.

Then we spend several pages of Menolly and Sebell trying to convince Toric that Piemur is crafty enough to survive outside in Thread. Even though Menolly, who has done it, is talking, and Toric admits that there are some from the north who have adapted to living outside the Hold. Unfortunately, it's another missed opportunity to tell tales of Piemur's exploits, and so Toric's unwillingness to believe the harpers feels more like a narrative ploy to keep everyone at Southern Hold so that we can resolve the story, instead of an organic reason to keep everyone from going off on their own. 

And there is watermelon. Not described by that name, of course, but watermelon all the same.

Sebell finally hits on a unique solution to pull Piemur out, if he's in the Hold or around it.

> "Drums! Piemur will answer a call on drums!"  
>  "Drums?" Toric threw back his head in an honest guffaw of surprise.  
>  "Yes, drums," said Sebell, beginning to find Toric's attitude offensive. "Where's your drumheights?"  
>  "Why would we need drumheights in Southern?"  
>  It took the astonished harpers a little while to understand that drumheights, traditional in every hills on the north, had never been installed in the [South's] single hold.

See, _this_ is how you keep people in place for the plot to advance, by giving them an actual problem to have to solve. Sebell meets Saneter, the Hold Harper, and finds the complete complement of drums available in the Hold are small dance assistance drums with no resonance at all. Toric, however, has some ideas about how to build a proper message drum. He describes an impossibly large tree trunk that could have a hide stretched over it to make a giant drum, to which Sebell is skeptical, and then Toric shows him that he's not exaggerating at all.

> Saneter, who had come with them, stooped to pick up a thick, knobby-ended branch and pounded the tree trunk experimentally. Everyone was surprised at the hollow boom that resulted. The fire lizards, who'd been perched on the surface, lifted with shrieks of protest.  
>  Grinning, Sebell held out his hand to Saneter for the stick. He beat out the phrase "Apprentice, report!" He grinned more broadly as the majestic tones echoed through the forest and started a veritable shower of tree-dwelling insects and snakes, shaken from their perches by the unexpected loud reverberations.

Toric cuts an appropriate size drum, and they haul it back to Southern Hold, have a bath (where Sebell starts ducking Menolly to let her fire lizards pull her back to the surface), and…

> Suddenly a sound paralyzed them: the sharp thudding of a practiced hand against what could only be the newly-acquired drum round. A practiced hand that beat a measure, "Harper here, anyone else?" and the staccato that was a question.  
>  "It has to be Piemur!" Menolly's cry was half-gasp half-scream, but the words weren't quite out of her mouth before both harpers were on their feet and running towards the ramp up from the harbor.  
>  "What's the matter?" they heard Toric yelling after them.  
>  "That was Piemur!" Sebell managed to gasp out as he charged a bare stride ahead of Menolly. But when they skidded to a halt on the shell-strewn area before the cavern, the was no one about.  
>  Sebell cupped his hands about his mouth. "PIEMUR! REPORT!"  
>  "Beauty! Rocky! Where is he?" gasped Menolly, half-angry with Piemur for the heart-stopping shock.  
>  "SEBELL?"  
>  The harper's name echoed and re-echoed coming from the cavern. Sebell and Menolly were halfway there when a tanned, bare-legged, shock-haired figure ran straight into them.

It's Piemur, and there is much happy dancing, and introductions all around, and Piemur tells Toric how he survived out in the wilds. Sebell gets another brilliant idea - to keep Piemur occupied, he'll install Piemur as the Hold drummer at Southern, assuming Toric is okay with it. Toric is okay with it, so long as Robinton is okay with it. Piemur almost jumps at the opportunity to stay with Farli and Stupid (and Sharra?) and to have his energy expended in the exploration and discovery of the Southern Continent. Menolly and Sebell both silently give Piemur the "you're a man now" appraisal, noticing his getting taller and broader of shoulders, and give their blessing to him.

Robinton gives his permission for Piemur to stay in Southern, and promotes Piemur to journeyman. And the loud jubilation is where this book ends, again with a promotion, and we've completed the reversal. Menolly started in a Hold out in the middle of nowhere as one of two musicians, Piemur finishes in a Hold out in the middle of nowhere as one of two musicians there. They've both suffered horrible abuse at the hands of Harpers in the middle, and both of them are still with the Harpers anyway.

I was hoping that this trilogy would give us insight into what life was like for people not dragonriders or Lord Holders or nobility. I was also hoping that the rampant abuse present in the Weyrs wasn't replicated elsewhere on the planet, but I was wrong there. And I'm not sure that the Harpers are sufficiently down the scale of nobility to give us insight into how the non-nobles live on Pern. Piemur-as-herdsman would probably have been the right place to start for that, but we didn't get to see that. Just adventures and training as musicians. I suppose it's a function of the narrative, but if the result was going to be that Piemur got to go to the Hall, that would make a reasonably good narrative to work with.

I was also hoping that this trilogy would give us more of the overall plot so that the detour would be justified, instead of having interrupted one trilogy for no reason. I don't think this trilogy did that. So, next time, we go back to the dragonriders and finish up the original trilogy of the Dragonriders of Pern, by following the thread of the only character who is both Lord Holder and dragonrider.

In the meantime, enjoy the playlist of the Harper Hall trilogy - I put some thought into the titles of the posts so that everyone would have a good musical experience through these sometimes rough situations.


End file.
